


fool me once, fool me twice (are you death or paradise?)

by imposterhuman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Developing Relationship, F/M, Identity Porn, M/M, Multi, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Protective Bucky Barnes, Spy Bucky Barnes, Spy Natasha Romanov, Tony Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Young Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 25,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24222244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: Bucky wasn’t the type of spy to go into a mission blind. Unless it was Director Fury giving him the mission, in which case, he trusted and feared the man in equal enough measures to do what he said without question. Normally, Fury didn’t steer him wrong, but Bucky was starting to get the feeling that somewhere, somehow, the director was watching and enjoying his discomfort. Fury was a bastard like that.Bucky knew he should’ve asked for clarification, but in his defense, Fury was scary. With that in mind, he didn't think he could be blamed for picking up the wrong partner. Now, if only he could get Natasha to see his side. Tony wasn'tthatbad.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark
Comments: 156
Kudos: 361
Collections: Iron Man





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ive been working on this story for months now and im so excited to finally get to post it!! its all finished, dont worry, and ill be updating on saturdays and wednesdays unless i forget until all 18 chapters are posted
> 
> i got the prompt for this off of a generator: Person A is a spy who is set to meet with their new Partner Person C, but Person A doesnt know what Person C looks like and ends up telling their half of a password to Person B, who accidently gives the correct response. Person A then procceeds to drag Person B around on their case while Person C is running around trying to find their partner
> 
> i hope you like it!!!

Bucky wasn’t the type of spy to go into a mission blind. Unless it was Director Fury giving him the mission, in which case, he trusted and feared the man in equal enough measures to do what he said without question. Normally, Fury didn’t steer him wrong, but Bucky was starting to get the feeling that somewhere, somehow, the director was watching and enjoying his discomfort. Fury was a bastard like that.

Bucky knew he should’ve asked for clarification, but in his defense, Fury was  _ scary _ . When the director himself assigned you a new partner, even Bucky knew the smartest course of action was to nod, thank him, and then flee; he had done just that. Only now, he was a little bit screwed. He’d exchanged a single message with his new partner; he didn’t even know their code name, much less what they looked like.

Fury had told him next to nothing about them, only that he’d know them when he saw them, or he wasn’t a spy worth his salt. Bucky was SHIELD’s best spy, he’d be fine. He and his partner had a code, of course, but it depended on Bucky saying the code phrase to the right person. No pressure. 

So Bucky marched through the doors of the crowded coffee shop they were using as a rendezvous with all the confidence he’d gained in his years working for SHIELD. Nobody looked up. He didn’t take it personally.

He scanned the room discreetly, noting in seconds several studying teens, a redhead in a leather jacket, and a mother corralling three kids, among others. No one stood out, which Bucky supposed was a good thing, even though it made his job harder. At least his partner was competent. He walked up to the counter, cheering internally when a young man slipped in line behind him, footsteps near silent. It had to be his new partner, if the way the kid was eyeing him was any indication. There was no other reason for that intense of a gaze that quickly after he entered.

(Bucky tried not to resent Fury for ostensibly giving his new partner more information than he gave Bucky. It was his own fault; he was the one who had switched out all of Fury’s plain eyepatches for Hello Kitty ones and it was only a matter of time before the director found out and punished him for it. It didn’t mean he had to like it, though.)

Still, Bucky kept his calm and detatched demeanor, the one Steve back at HQ had deemed his “resting murder face.” It wouldn’t do to tip his hand too soon. When the line moved up, Bucky could feel the young man’s eyes on him. 

He pretended to study the drink options for a second before he stepped up to order. “One large cappuccino,” he said, loud enough that the man behind him could hear. It was the code phrase; any second, his partner would answer with-

“Not bad, but I would have gone with a double espresso,” the brunet said, tossing a short curl out of his eyes. He grinned mischievously. “But there’s no accounting for taste.”

Bucky was too well-trained to startle when he heard the code-- double espresso-- but he turned with a coy smile. “Well, maybe you’ll just have to convince me,” he said with a shrug. “I’m Bucky.”

“Tony,” replied the man, accepting his own coffee with a grateful smile at the barista. He was effortlessly charming, Bucky noted, something that came in handy in their line of work. There wasn’t even a hint of uncertainty as he gestured for Bucky to sit down with him, like rejection wasn’t something he’d ever considered as a possibility. With looks like his, Bucky was pretty sure it never was. 

Bucky collected his cappuccino and sat down easily, facing Tony. His breath caught slightly; Tony was absolutely gorgeous. Honey brown eyes with some of the longest eyelashes Bucky had ever seen gave the younger man a startled Bambi look, but the innocence was offset by the clear intelligence in those eyes. Bucky had no doubt that Tony was a formidable spy, even if his slight stature made him appear weaker. 

“So, Tony,” Bucky purred, relishing the taste of the word in his mouth. There were no rules against flirting with your partner, right? On a different level, his mind was hyperaware, parsing through Tony’s every word. Anything could be part of a code, some secret way of telling him something, and he had to be on his guard to catch it. “How do you plan to convince me?”

Tony took a sip of his drink, tongue flicking out quickly to catch an errant drop. “Well,” he said breathily. Bucky’s pants felt a little tight. “I figured I’d just sit here and let you come to the right conclusion yourself.” He leaned forward a little bit and Bucky could smell the coffee on his breath. He definitely knew something Bucky didn’t, that much was clear. Whether he wanted to share, though... “You’ll get there, don’t worry.”

_ Damn _ , Tony was good. Bucky could only imagine how he was with marks. Slowly, deliberately, Bucky plucked the cup from Tony’s hand and drank from it. “Hmm,” he put on his best bedroom eyes. They weren’t as good as Tony’s, but he was no slouch at seduction, either. Bucky felt like he was on a job interview, demonstrating his special skills. If only he had his rifle; that would’ve surely impressed his partner. Still, he figured he put on a good show. “You might be right. I might have to take another taste to find out.”

“The cup’s empty,” Tony pointed out, clearly angling for something. He licked his lips, but there was something calculating in his eyes that Bucky couldn’t quite decipher. It almost felt like a come on, like an invitation to-

Bucky was reminded, harshly, that all of Tony’s behavior was an act. It just looked so  _ real _ that some part of Bucky’s subconscious had fallen for it. He shook himself out of it and took a second to compose himself, to paste on a smirk that felt a little false, though he knew no one could tell. At least this boded well for his and Tony’s compatibility as partners. Besides, it had all been in good fun. They had a better gauge of each other’s abilities, and all that; Bucky was already thinking of where Tony’s skills could come in handy on their mission.

“Want to get out of here, doll?” he said in a low voice. They needed to get to work sooner rather than later; according to Fury, the mission was time-sensitive. They also had to be able to speak freely, hence leaving the coffee shop and heading back to a secure location. 

Tony nodded. “Not the weirdest way I’ve ever been picked up,” he teased with a shrug for the benefit of the audience around them. “And I’m actually remarkably easy. Lead the way, Bucky bear.”

Bucky shoved down the spark of attraction to the same place he shoved all of his inconvenient emotions. “Your place or mine?” 

His apartment was completely secure, verified by SHIELD and then swept through by Bucky himself, but Tony might have a better setup somewhere. At the very least, Bucky could learn more about his new partner than expert seducer and coffee fiend from what scarce few personal objects were sure to be at his place.

Tony thought for a moment. “Yours,” he decided, standing and grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair. “Show me a good time, Buckaroo.”

Bucky grinned lavisciously.  _ If only _ . “Follow me, then, doll,” he said instead, winking. He was already shifting into mission mode in his mind, so the flirt rang empty. He hoped Tony couldn’t hear it. “I’ll show you the best time of your life.”

Tony’s hand brushed his as they walked out. Bucky figured it was just to avoid suspicion from the people watching them leave and linked his fingers with Tony’s. Tony shot him a smile that he couldn’t help but to return. 

Bucky hadn’t really wanted a partner, but he thought he could get used to Tony.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot BELIEVE i forgot to thank my excellent betas in the first note. so thank you adi and @ironstan-in-a-can for the help with everything!!!
> 
> enjoy :))

Tony wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, if he was being honest. It wasn’t a new feeling; Rhodey could attest to all the situations he jumped in feet first without looking. It wasn’t even new for him to be completely lost on the arm of a beautiful man. Tony wasn’t exactly sure what that said about him, but he  _ was  _ sure that he didn’t want to examine it too closely.

When Bucky had asked if he wanted to get out of there, Tony was expecting a taxi ride to Bucky’s apartment, a quick fuck, and maybe a phone number, if he was lucky. Bucky didn’t look like a phone number type of guy. Instead, he got dragged on foot to a spartan loft with no less than seven locks on the door (and what looked like a gun in the flower vase, but Tony didn’t really want to investigate) and handed a thick folder.

If this was a kidnapping, it was the weirdest one he’d ever had. And Tony had been kidnapped a lot.

It usually didn’t end well for the people who kidnapped him, though. Still, when Bucky directed him to sit down and read, he flipped open the dossier. So sue him, he was curious. At least Bucky hadn’t taken his phone or anything; he could always call Rhodey for a getaway car. His friend would bitch, but he’d come. And then Tony could rant about his second-most incompetant kidnapping ever to someone who would make appropriately sympathetic noises. Really, it was a win-win.

“What’s this?” he asked, skimming the file quickly. It was right out of a spy movie, containing information on what appeared to be some sort of evil organization. Tony was starting to think that he hadn’t been kidnapped; rather, Bucky-- if that really was his name-- had mistaken him for someone else, a first for him. Call him selfish, but Tony wasn’t inclined to correct him. Playing spy for a few hours was far better than playing the dutiful heir for Howard and SI. It wasn’t like it was permanent.

His inner Rhodey was screaming at him for being an idiot, but Tony was very good at tuning him out. 

“It’s our mission,” said Bucky. His earlier flirty tone was gone, replaced with something cold and serious. Tony was reminded of knife blades and ice and he tried to hide the shiver that made its way down his spine. “We’ve been sent to assassinate Alexander Pierce, the head of HYDRA.”

Tony knew Pierce from some of his father’s galas; the senator had always struck him as slimy. The one time he’d tried to make a weapons deal with SI, Tony had hacked the servers and blocked it before Howard could see it. Something about Pierce rubbed him the wrong way, and it appeared his instincts had been correct.

Feeling a little faint, but determined not to let it show, Tony kept reading. “So,” he said awkwardly. “What’s the plan, then? Just go up and shoot him?”

Bucky barked out a laugh like Tony said something hilarious. To a spy, he probably did. “Infiltration, probably,” he said. “Provided you’re good at it. I’m more of a brute force type myself. Going by that show at the coffee shop, though, I don’t think we have much to worry about.”

“Infiltration, yeah,” Tony ignored the bit about whatever  _ show  _ he put on and instead thought about his inability to walk down the street without being recognized. It was a wonder Bucky hadn’t yet; spies must not read a lot of tabloids. “We could do that, or you can put me in front of a computer and I can get you anything you need. That way, there’s no room for squishy human fuck ups. Not to brag, but there isn’t a server in the world I can’t crack.”

So maybe he was bragging a little bit. But Bucky leaned forward with interest. “A hacker?” he said. “I’ve never worked with a hacker before. Normally, HQ hoards you guys. How’d you get put on fieldwork?”

“I’m just charming like that,” Tony batted his eyelashes, hoping his masks weren’t as see through as they felt. Complete and utter confusion wasn’t something he felt often, so it wasn’t like he had a strategy for it. He was talking out of his ass and hoping Bucky bought it.

“Can you get into HYDRA’s servers?” demanded Bucky. 

Without thinking, Tony nodded. “Might take a while depending on the level of encryption, but I’ve literally invented new types of coding for fun.” As soon as he said it, he wanted to shove the words back into his mouth. If Bucky read any kind of science magazines, DUM-E, Tony’s beloved and idiotic first-of-its-kind learning AI, had been all over the tech pages for months. 

“Good,” Bucky said, flashing him a hint of a smile. Tony got the feeling that  _ this  _ was the real Bucky, rather than the over the top flirting from before. Or  _ realer _ , at least. He was a spy; Tony would probably never know with certainty what was real about him. “I’ll get you a computer. If you get in, we can make a more formal plan.”

“A lot of confidence you have there for my abilities,” Tony said dryly, rolling his eyes. Figures, even the badass spy would underestimate him. It wasn’t like he had a complex, or anything. “I said I’d get us in, that means I’ll get us in.”

Bucky at least had the grace to look a little chagrined. “I trust you,” he said after a moment. Tony narrowed his eyes suspiciously.  _ No fucking way. _ “To get the job done.”

“Good choice,” Tony said mildly, tapping his fingers. His mind was running through security codes, creating the skeleton of a program that he figured would work on any firewall. He firmly shoved his SI projects out of his mind; for today, he was going to focus only on not being Tony Stark, son of Howard Stark, heir to SI, and instead just be  _ Tony _ . And Tony could be a spy if he wanted to. Tony could be anything. “How soon can you get me a computer?”

He’d use his own, but it was pretty obnoxiously branded with  _ Stark Industries _ . If he was trying to keep his identity a secret, it definitely wasn’t a good idea to bust out the monogrammed everything that he owned.

“I’ll leave now,” Bucky resolved. He stashed the mission folder somewhere on his person, fast enough that Tony couldn’t tell where it was. Even a detailed examination of Bucky’s person (read: checking Bucky out), yielded no clues. Tony was more than a little impressed. “Watch the doors and windows. Guns are just about everywhere; you know the drill. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Tony decidedly did  _ not  _ know the drill, but Bucky literally melted into the shadows before he could say anything. Not that he would have, any way, but it was the principle of the thing. He sighed loudly, casting a look down at where he could see the handle of a gun peeking out from under the table.

Tony shifted his gaze towards the kitchen, where a katana hung in the hallway and the knives in the block were less for onions and more for people. He was starting to think that maybe, possibly, there was a reason he never left his lab. If he got out of this in one piece, Tony decided, he was getting a coffee machine for his lab, screw healthy habits.

“Jesus fuck,” he breathed, burying his head in his hands. “Rhodey was right; I  _ am  _ an idiot.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is late, i was bingeing "the great" which is an EXCELLENT show if yall get the chance to watch it
> 
> enjoy!!

Natasha had never failed a mission before, but if she didn’t find her partner soon, she was going to have to flee the country to escape the shame. Stupid Fury, not giving her all the information. When she got back to HQ, she was going to hack the database in retaliation. 

Because of Fury’s refusal to give her the name or face of her partner, she-- loathe as she was to admit it-- hadn’t managed to single them out. In her books, that was the worst failure of all. She had been trained too well to miss things like this. In her head, her old handlers cursed in harsh Russian. 

Natasha had been fooled, and since there was no way she was going to tell Fury that, she really only had one option left if she wanted to remedy her mistake.

Taking out her phone, she dialed a number by rote and resisted the urge to flush in embarrassment. At least she still had one over the man she was calling. It was just calling in a debt, she told herself, not admitting failure to someone else. Besides, Clint hardly counted as a person.

“Clint,” she said as soon as the man picked up the phone. It took two whole rings; Clint was getting sloppy. “I’m cashing in on my favor.”

“I don’t owe you a favor,” Clint protested. He never had been good at keeping track of who owed whom. Luckily for him, she was. “I’m all paid up after-”

“Budapest?”

There was a long pause on the other end. Natasha, despite herself, couldn’t help but smirk. Budapest was her trump card in just about any situation with Clint, and he well knew it. “What do you need?”

“The name of my new partner,” she admitted, teeth gritted. Clint would make fun of her endlessly, she knew, but at least he’d get it for her. They had been partners once upon a time, until she took a long-term assignment back in her homeland of Russia and he stayed to work with Coulson. The loyalty of years, though, couldn’t be erased by a few thousand miles. “It’s not on the electronic database, but I know you can get it.”

“What makes you think I have access to super secure SHIELD paper files?” Clint teased, clearly enjoying himself. Natasha wanted to stab him, just a little bit. A friendly stab. It wouldn’t even hurt that much.

“Because you’re sleeping with the man who has the access codes,” she said bluntly, not in the mood to waffle back and forth with Clint like she usually was. She had to find her new partner and threaten bodily harm (and maybe punch them once or twice. Lightly). “Call me back when you have the name.”

“Tasha-” she hung up on him sans fanfare. 

Natasha ran a hand through her hair in a rare sign of exasperation. She had  _ told  _ Fury she didn’t want a new partner. She worked better alone, but the director had insisted with that one smirk that meant he knew more than her (she hated that one the most). And look how it turned out!

Now, assuming her partner had shown up to the coffee shop rendezvous as planned, they’d either picked up a random stranger or gone back to HQ unsuccessful. And since Natasha hadn’t heard anything through the grapevine, she had to assume it was the former, which meant an even bigger mess for her to clean up.

At least her partner was good; she hadn’t even noticed them enter or leave, even though she’d been watching everyone in the shop very carefully from her seat in the back corner. Not that good, considering they hadn’t noticed  _ her _ , either, but decent. 

Natasha sat down on one of the few pieces of furniture in her safehouse, perched like a cat on the very edge of the cushion. Even in what SHIELD deemed secure, she stayed alert, unable to relax. It was a side effect of her training, she knew, but it had saved her life more than once. Grabbing the file next to her, she decided to read through the mission again, just in case things went south and she had to complete it alone. It wouldn’t be the first time. She wouldn’t even mind this time.

Assassination, Pierce, HYDRA… it was all routine for the Black Widow. She’d get in, play the new recruit, and eventually get close enough to take her shot. There was no telling how long it would take, but once she was in position, she’d never failed an assassination. 

What could she possibly need a partner for, anyway? It seemed like a one-spy job. Not that Natasha couldn’t see the advantages of having a sniper or a hacker on her side; she just didn’t need either to be successful. She had half a mind to call Fury and tell him just that. She wouldn’t, because she did like being alive, but she thought about it. 

When her phone rang, she almost startled, lost in thought as she was. She slammed the  _ accept _ button, certain that Clint wouldn’t have called her back without information she could use. 

“Do you have it?” she asked, not waiting even a second for meaningless pleasantries. 

“Hello, Natasha, how are you?” Clint (predictably) grumbled. He was touchy like that sometimes. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. In fact, I’m-”

“Clint.”

“-wonderful, did you know there are traps on the doors to the archives? Including a fun little explosive that burns your eyebrows off? Because I-”

“ _ Clint. _ ”

“Yeah, yeah, I have it,” he said with a huff. “I’ve been exiled to the couch for three days for breaking into the secured archives, so I hope you’re happy with yourself, but I have it.”

It took a lot of Natasha’s willpower not to make an impatient noise. “And?” she prompted. Coulson would forgive Clint in a day or less; she wasn’t worried. 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” said Clint, pausing for drama that she didn’t care about. “The Winter Soldier.”

Natasha hung up on him without another word, one mission accomplished. She opened her laptop.  _ The Winter Soldier _ . She’d heard the name before, in whispered snatches of conversation between terrified rookies, but she’d never actually seen the Soldier herself. 

She typed his name into the SHIELD database, looking for something, anything, to give her a starting point to search.  _ James Buchanan Barnes _ . A picture of a brunet man loaded, as well as a heavily redacted file. From what she could tell, though, he’d completed hundreds of successful missions, most of them more classified than she could access. His face tickled something in her memory, and she strained to place him. 

_ The coffee shop _ . She had seen him walk in, but he’d immediately started talking to a younger man, so she’d written him off. She cursed under her breath when she realized that Barnes and the other man had left together; Barnes clearly thought  _ he  _ was the new partner, not her. If Barnes had given the random stranger classified details, Natasha was going to kill him, Fury be damned. 

In one fluid motion, she rolled to her feet, grabbing a gun and a few knives with her coat on her way out the door. They were undetectable in the folds of her clothing as she stalked down to the street with renewed purpose. She had a partner to find and a loose end to tie up, one way or another. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

The twitchiness of being in one place for too long, even a secure place, was starting to settle in Bucky’s bones. When Tony gave him an excuse to move, he practically jumped on it. Getting a computer wasn’t exactly the kind of job he was used to, but he’d take it.

Bucky knew there was a tech store a block away from the apartment. He could go there and get the computer in an hour, tops. Then he and Tony could actually get started with the mission. 

He hadn’t lied to Tony; he’d never worked with a hacker before. He was completely out of his depth as to what to expect. His plan was pretty much to grab a computer, hightail it back to the apartment, and hope Tony could work some magic like the techies back at HQ. 

Bucky couldn’t deny that he felt safer with a cool voice in his ear, telling him where to go without hesitation. The HYDRA mission would surely go a lot faster with someone like that on his side. Tony seemed a little… hyperactive to be the guy in the chair, though. 

In the short time he’d known his partner, Bucky was struck with how unlike a spy Tony acted. He talked at a mile a minute about anything and everything, walked through doorways without checking them, and didn’t even carry a weapon. Maybe it was all a cover; Bucky had noticed Tony’s intelligent eyes scanning everything and everything, had seen minute shifts in body language with every changing mask, but Tony was still the least subtle spy Bucky had ever met.

There was something intriguing about him, though, something that drew Bucky in and made him want to learn more. It was a new kind of feeling, and Bucky didn’t like it one bit.

He jolted out of his musings when he saw the same car pass him for the third time. Even when he was thinking of something else, Bucky was always cataloguing details like that; in his world, paying attention could be the difference between life and death. Immediately, Bucky darted into an alley, trying to get away from the street.

“Shit,” he cursed. While coincidences were always possible, it was far more likely he was being tailed. And he had no way of contacting Tony to come up with a rendezvous point. “Shit!”

He’d have to go back to the apartment and get Tony, probably bringing his tail with him. Three blocks wasn’t enough to shake them, especially if he wanted to get back as fast as possible. 

Bucky gave himself one more curse word and one more minute before he sank into Winter Soldier mode. The unimportant things faded into the background as Bucky planned the best way back.

He slid through the shadows and into the crowd on the street, hoping against hope that his pursuers weren’t on foot. It was easier to lose a car than a person walking. Going against every instinct, Bucky walked slowly, trying not to arouse suspicion. 

He took several wrong turns, but it wasn’t long before he picked out at least three followers making the turns with him. A fourth peeled off in the direction of the apartment building, and Bucky knew he was out of time.

Bucky started sprinting, heedless of the attention he was getting. He was fast, fast enough that he knew he could beat out his pursuers. Stupid partners, he cursed in his mind. If he was working solo, there wouldn’t be a problem. 

When he got to the building, he threw himself up the stairs, not bothering with the slow elevator. Behind him, he could hear the door opening and the cheerful chime of the lift being called. It was only three floors, so Bucky made it before the elevator had even left the ground.

The noise of the doors sliding open wasn’t masked by his scrambling for keys, trying to match each one to the correct lock in record time. He had considered knocking, but Tony probably wouldn’t let him in in an abundance of caution. They had forgotten to establish a code before Bucky had left.

Bucky was hyper aware of the eyes watching him as he turned the last key, letting himself into the apartment. He closed the door behind him, making sure every lock was turned so as to delay anyone trying to get in.

“Tony?” he called, flipping a knife into his palm. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that whoever was tailing him had already breached the apartment and he needed to be prepared. It would be a shame, though; he liked Tony. Finding his corpse would suck. “You still here?”

Tony popped his head out of the kitchen, a manic sort of gleam in his eye. “Right here,” he said, a note of apology in his voice. “I, uh, might’ve rewired your appliances to work a little better. Sorry, I got bored.”

Bucky blinked in surprise. “They’re not mine,” he said, momentarily derailed by the absurdity of Tony’s behavior. “This is a safehouse.”

He didn’t remark on the  _ bored  _ bit of Tony’s comment, even though it made about as much sense to him as the first part. They were on a mission; how was it possible that Tony could be  _ bored _ ? It wasn’t like there was a shortage of things to plan. Bucky shook the train of thought from his mind; he could think about Tony’s weirdness later. They had bigger problems.

Tony was still talking about the microwave, but Bucky cut him off with a sharp look. “I was followed here,” he said, grabbing the important things from the apartment and shoving them into a nondescript backpack. “We need to leave.”

To his credit, Tony took it in stride. “I can blow the place up,” he offered nonchalantly. “Two minutes and every electronic in this room can be a bomb.”

Bucky was begrudgingly impressed. Even the best lab techs he knew needed at least five. “I think we’re good on the explosives,” he said, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “So long as we leave quickly. The fire escape would be best, but they might already be watching it.”

“Who are  _ they _ ?” Tony followed him to the window like a duckling.

Bucky didn’t see anyone, but he could hear footsteps in the hall outside the apartment. They were running out of time. Hefting his bag onto his shoulder, he dropped onto the iron stairs and started climbing down.

“Stop asking questions,” he called up to Tony, who was following at a more sedate pace. “And start moving. I don’t really want to die on a fire escape.”

Bucky didn’t stop to examine the fact that if Tony got caught, he’d stay and help him, even at the risk of his own life. That wasn’t his usual MO; the Winter Soldier worked alone, fought alone, and nearly died alone. He was  _ terrible  _ backup for exactly that reason. But somehow, this scrawny little hacker brought out his protective side. Bucky didn’t know how to feel about that, so he shoved it to the side as a problem for later.

“Got it,” Tony huffed, speeding up to keep pace. Bucky slowed down a little bit. It was obvious that Tony was in shape, but he was no Winter Soldier. Or, Bucky mused, looking down at Tony’s mussed hair, it could be that Tony was a solid half-foot shorter than him. “Where are we going?”

“What did I just say about questions?” Bucky hissed, but there was no heat behind it. He wasn’t sure what about Tony made him softer, but he knew he didn’t like it.

Tony somehow managed to make his shrug look innocent, though there was clearly nothing innocent about him. “I like to know things.”

“If you must know,” Bucky grumbled with a roll of his eyes. “We’re headed to another safe house. We’ll regroup when we get there, figure out our next move.”

Bucky dropped off of the fire escape into a crouch, not bothering with the ladder. Tony stared at the ground apprehensively from where he was still up high. Bucky made an impatient motion with his hand; they really had to get going.

“You coming?” he prompted. “Don’t worry, princess, I’ll catch you.”

“Not your princess,” Tony muttered lowly, though Bucky heard it. “You’d better fucking catch me, though. If I break my ankle, I’m never going to forgive you.”

Tony jumped trustingly into Bucky’s waiting arms. Bucky definitely didn’t think about how that made his heart flutter in his chest, or how he didn’t want to let go once he had an armful of the other man. They had a mission; there was no time for squishy feelings.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am. an idiot. i put up the wrong chapter earlier, so you guys get two!! rip me but i hope you like this!

Tony was very good at telling when people were watching him. It was a survival skill; growing up in Stark Manor, first, meant he always had to be aware of who was where. After he moved out, it helped him avoid kidnappings and crazy exes. He always knew when the prickling on the back of his neck meant that someone was paying a little too much attention to him. And someone was  _ definitely  _ paying too much attention to him. 

Tony straightened his spine, resisting the urge to make himself small and slink off.  _ Stark men are made of iron.  _ Just because he was completely out of his depth in a situation he was in no way qualified for didn't mean he’d let his nerves show.

Bucky walked next to him, looking completely unbothered. His hands were resting casually in his pockets; if Tony hadn’t watched him stash the knives, he never would’ve guessed they were there. The picture-perfect memory, though, reminded Tony that what he was playing like a game was a matter of life and death for Bucky. He’d figured out, probably not as fast as he should’ve, that this  _ wasn’t  _ some sort of elaborate roleplay to get Bucky in the mood. In his defense, pretty people tended to make his brain slower, so he thought he could be forgiven. Still, Tony felt bad, ready to confess and back out, if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t think he’d be allowed to leave. And Rhodey said he had no self-preservation instinct.

“Bucky, darling,” he hissed, putting on a smile for the benefit of their stalker. At least he could be useful to Bucky, hopefully useful enough to avoid a knife in the gut. He had caught their follower’s reflection for a second in a store window, long enough to pinpoint the red hair steadily making its way through the crowd towards them. “Redhead. Twenty feet behind us and closing in. She’s been behind us for ten minutes.”

Bucky’s eyes shuttered as he turned to look under the guise of adjusting his bag. “I see her,” he said lowly, facing forward again. “Turn into the next alley. It’ll be easier to fight if we aren’t in a crowd like this.”

Now, Tony was no slouch when it came to staying in shape, but he knew he couldn’t match the spies in a fight. There was a sort of sinuous grace in Bucky’s every step that made Tony feel like a stumbling elephant in comparison. He didn’t say anything, though, hoping that maybe, possibly, Bucky would give him some kind of out, like-

“Oh, you computer types don’t fight much, do you?” asked Bucky, holding a frankly alarming amount of weaponry for someone that had been unarmed a minute before. 

Tony shook his head meekly. “Not really, no,” he agreed, taking several steps deeper into the alleyway. “But I’m super good at playing bait.”

“Okay, then,” Bucky nodded and visibly planned. “Here’s what we’ll do. You stand down there, try to look suspicious. I’ll jump her when she gets close enough.”

“This is a terrible plan,” Tony grumbled, getting into position nonetheless. It wasn’t like he had a better idea. Strategy, it seemed, was neither of their strong suits. “If she kills me, know that I’m gonna haunt your ass for the rest of time.”

He did his best to calm the shaking in his hands. Bucky would protect him. And if he failed, Rhodey would surely avenge him. Leaning against the brick wall of the alley, Tony started rummaging in his pocket for his emergency screwdriver (it was such a small thing, but he felt safer clenching it in his fist, just in case). He tried to look as baitlike as possible; sadly, it was very, very easy. He couldn’t see Bucky anymore, and he hoped the spy hadn’t just abandoned him to his fate.

It felt like hours before the shadows at the mouth of the alley changed slightly. If Tony hadn’t been looking for it, he never would’ve noticed. As it was, he had a half-second of warning before a red blur flew at him, not that it was much help.

He was a little ashamed to say that he shrieked and dropped his screwdriver.

The woman didn’t get close before Bucky was lunging out of the shadows and jumping at her. Somehow, she dodged, spinning on her heel faster than Tony could follow and hitting Bucky in the throat. Tony’s heart was beating out of his chest for the moment it took Bucky to recover and fight back. 

And fight back he did; Bucky looked like a whirling demon, down to the snarl on his lips and the icy look in his eyes. His every strike screamed precision where it hit. Tony could calculate the power behind the blows, but the woman barely flinched, just firing back with a volley of her own. And  _ shit _ , Tony hadn’t known people could bend like that.

The cold, calculating part of Tony’s head that sounded like Howard told him that  _ now  _ was the time to run. Now, when Bucky was distracted by the assassin woman, he could slip away and go back to his life. Bucky was a stranger; why should Tony care what happened to him? It was clear that Bucky hadn’t recognized him. Tony could slip away and no one would ever be the wiser. 

He shut that thought down viciously. Bending down, Tony picked a good sized rock off of the ground and hefted it in his palm. He watched the redhead and Bucky fight, mind calculating speeds and trajectories almost unconsciously. There were perks to being a genius, he thought, and threw the rock. 

It struck true, hitting the redhead’s dominant arm where she was holding a knife. As a result, she dropped it and it clattered just out of reach. Bucky sent him a grateful look and took full advantage of the opening. He pinned her against the wall, finally, getting his own knife up at her throat. “Who sent you?” Bucky growled.

She just laughed in his face. “Who do you think?”

Bucky paled, and Tony felt like he was missing something big. Not a new feeling but he didn’t like it any better the more he felt it. “HYDRA?” Bucky said, something dangerous in his voice. Tony had never heard of the name, but he stashed it in his mind to investigate later, provided he didn’t get murdered in the next few minutes.

The woman looked remarkably unimpressed, and Tony had to admire how she was keeping her cool. “SHIELD, you absolute idiot,” she fired back. “I’m your new partner, Soldier.”

SHIELD sounded familiar, somehow, but that was secondary. The redhead woman had just blown his fake identity to shreds with five words.  _ Shit _ .

Tony froze in place. Howard’s voice in his head was crowing in victory. He was pretty sure his silver tongue wasn’t going to get him out of this one. His mind was scrambling to come up with an excuse, but nothing came to mind. He wasn’t even sure why he’d played along in the first place; how was he supposed to explain it to two pissed off spies?

Bucky dropped his knife in surprise and Tony winced. He spread his arms in what he hoped was a placating gesture and put his best innocent eyes on as Bucky turned to stare at him. At least he wasn’t armed anymore, but Tony had no doubt Bucky could kill him with his bare hands.

“About that…” Tony said helplessly. “Surprise?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!
> 
> EDIT: i am. so dumb. if you guys noticed the odd time skip, its because i FORGOT A WHOLEASS CHAPTER. its up now, so this is now chapter 6 instead of 5 and yall get a double update today

Natasha tossed her knife from hand to hand, relishing in the nervous stares of the two men in front of her. She had dragged them back to her safehouse for interrogation; she was going to get to the bottom of the situation, even if she had to do some stabbing.

“So,” she said, voice dangerously low. She ran the blade along her fingertip. “Could you explain that again, please?”

Barnes visibly swallowed. For a spy, he was awfully transparent. At his side, though, Stark matched her glare with an appraising look of his own. 

Of all people, Natasha hadn’t expected Barnes to pick up  _ Tony Stark _ . Everyone and their mother knew who the young genius was; SHIELD had tentative plans to recruit him for his work on AI alone. Barnes, though, seemed to have no idea that the disheveled kid was the heir to the biggest tech company in the world. Her partner really was an idiot.

Stark kept watching her, though she couldn’t say for what. Natasha wasn’t intimidated by the clear intelligence in his eyes; she had killed plenty of other geniuses with the same look. She saw the twitch in his fingers as he forced himself forward, but his voice was steady when he spoke.

“It’s not Bucky’s fault,” he said, almost imperceptibly angling himself in front of the other man. She noted it and filed it away for later. “I thought he was picking me up, and then I went along with it when he started with the whole spy thing. I figured he was just super into roleplay.”

Natasha arched a delicate eyebrow and turned her stare on Barnes. “And you didn’t notice?” she asked. “You picked up a civilian, and you somehow mistook him for  _ me _ ?”

“In my defense, I got no information about you,” Barnes said gruffly. “And he got the code correct.”

“He’s a  _ civilian _ ,” she stressed, a little offended. She knew that he’d been told that he was getting one of SHIELD’s best as his partner, and he’d thought the scrawny little child he’d picked up was her? She was tempted to strangle him on principle. “I’m the  _ Black Widow _ . How was that not obvious?”

Barnes threw up his hands in an unbecoming display of emotion. “Look,” he said, giving her a glare that clued her in as to why he was called the Winter Soldier. His eyes were chips of ice, unforgiving and harsh. They didn’t quite distract from his sheepish wince, still embarrassed, but she could see where he’d garnered his intimidating reputation. “He gave me the correct code, the one  _ you  _ were supposed to give me, actually.”

Natasha tilted her head, conceding the point and her own failure. She should’ve seen Barnes; he was right on that. She looked back at Stark, who was subtly fidgeting but still angled in front of Barnes, like he could protect him in any way. It was cute. 

“You,” she said, one piece of the puzzle still not clicking. “How did you know the code phrase?”

“I don’t even know what the code phrase is  _ now _ ,” Stark rolled his eyes, a bold move. She’d ripped other people’s eyes out for less. “I’m secure enough in my intelligence to admit that I have no fucking clue what is happening, other than you’re threatening us with a knife and I definitely have the worst luck with hookups.”

“ _ Hookups _ ?” Barnes sounded particularly strangled and his face was turning an odd shade of red. It only got redder when Stark shrugged shamelessly.

Despite herself, Natasha couldn’t help but be amused. It wasn’t often that someone she had at knifepoint was as blatantly unafraid of her as Stark was. She wasn’t sure if that made him smart or stupid, factoring in that she had no intention of actually killing him. 

She decided on stupid. It fit with the rest of his actions.

“It was double espresso,” she said. “Barnes was supposed to say something about cappuccinos to me, and I’d reply with something about double espressos. But you two messed that up, didn’t you?”

Stark blinked owlishly. “That’s a terrible code,” he said after a long pause. “That’s, like, the worst code you could have come up with for a  _ coffee shop _ . You literally picked the most common drinks! Were you seriously not able to think of anything better?”

He was right, but Natasha wasn’t going to say anything. Especially when it meant admitting that she was wrong. 

“Yeah, I didn’t feel good about it either,” Barnes admitted, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand. There was a sheepish smile on his lips, the kind that transformed his whole face. Not that he hadn’t been attractive before (Natasha was a spy, but she wasn’t  _ blind _ ), but the openness was oddly compelling. 

And the way Stark echoed it without a care for his audience made her feel something she couldn’t quite name. She shoved it aside; the Black Widow didn’t have time for distractions in the form of beautiful things. 

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” she said dismissively. “We have an actual mission, if you could focus? I-”

“Hold up,” Stark held up a hand. “I thought we established that I’m not supposed to be here, right? I’m not a part of this nebulous  _ we _ , am I?”

“We can’t exactly let you leave,” Barnes said when she stayed expectantly silent. She wasn’t going to tell  _ Tony Stark  _ that he was essentially kidnapped until they finished their mission. “With everything you know, it’s too much of a risk.”

Stark took the news better than she’d thought he would. If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. It didn’t make sense, but very few things did at the moment. She watched him carefully, trying to figure him out, but his masks were pretty good, for a civilian.

“Well, then,” he said, trying for casual. He almost hit it, but there was a stiffness in what should have been a relaxed pose that Natasha’s carefully-trained eyes caught on. “How can I help?”

Natasha could think of many things a tech genius would be useful for on their job, but she didn’t trust Stark as far as he could throw her (she could throw him fairly far; he looked tiny and weak). Barnes, she trusted only out of necessity. They were both SHIELD and that had to be good enough.

“You can’t,” she said bluntly. “You’re a civilian and a liability. The best thing you can do is try not to get killed so I don’t have to fill out extra paperwork. Go stand in the corner, or something, and stay out of the way.”

(It wasn’t just that she didn’t trust Stark, because that wasn’t quite accurate. She was good at reading people, and Stark struck her as the kind of person that she could grow to trust. It was more that, for the first time in a while, she cared what happened to a virtual stranger. Natasha was not a small detail person; individuals rarely mattered to her. But there was a light in Stark that she didn’t really want to see extinguished.)

“Whatever,” said Stark, eyes shuttering. Try as she might, but she couldn’t read him. He practically sauntered over to the corner, plopping himself down with all the attitude she had expected. It didn’t matter; he was out of the way.

(So she took him out of the line of fire and ignored the disapproving glance from Barnes. She and her partner didn’t need to agree to work together.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

After almost a week of planning, Bucky was pretty sure he was going to go insane if they didn’t  _ do something _ . He wasn’t sure why Natasha-- she had finally deemed them worthy of knowing her name-- and Tony weren’t clawing at the walls to get out of the stuffy safehouse.

Bucky was desperate enough to volunteer to do the  _ grocery runs _ , he was so sick of the apartment. He knew that it was unspylike of him, and he could be patient if it was life or death, but the kind of mindless waiting that came with planning a hit? There was a reason that he usually jumped into things headfirst.

He figured Natasha and Tony had picked up on it. Not that Tony was much better; he’d built no less than three explosives the first day they’d tried to keep him out of the way, just because he wanted something to do with his hands and  _ bombs come naturally to me, Bucky.  _ When they gave up and let him be underfoot, he was a lot more agreeable. Natasha was cool as ice, as she’d been since the very beginning, but Bucky could see the slight signs of strain starting to show on her beautiful features.

Bucky wasn’t blind; both of his partners (and he was counting Tony as a partner, because otherwise he’d have to face the fact that he dragged a  _ civilian  _ into a dangerous op, and Bucky was all about avoidance. He’d deal with it at some point, but for now, he was going to act as if Tony was just a particularly green agent and that was that) were stupidly attractive. Even with no makeup or fancy clothes, Natasha was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever met. And Tony, with his doe eyes and sculpted cheekbones, took the title for most beautiful man. It wasn’t like it mattered, because they were on a job, not a date, but Bucky couldn’t help but notice it. 

“I’m going for a walk,” Bucky announced. He wasn’t even sure what he was fleeing: his boredom or his own partners.

Natasha leveled him with a disapproving glance. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she said neutrally. “Because it seems to me like an unnecessary risk.”

“It’s actually a good thing,” Bucky argued. “What’s more suspicious: an apartment that no one ever enters or leaves, or some random guy going about his day? If anyone’s surveilling, holing up in here just makes what we’re doing that much more obvious.”

He thought it was a pretty good explanation, seeing as it was bullshit he’d made up on the spot. She seemed to consider it for a moment, examining him with those piercing eyes of hers. 

“He’s right,” Tony piped in from the other room. Both spies turned to glare through the doorway at him. “What? You talk loud. I’m just saying, I was the MIT dorm cryptid, and it drew so much more attention than just, you know, being normal. I think I got wellness checks called on me once a week, but that might’ve been because of the explosions. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve essentially become the apartment cryptids and people are going to notice.”

Bucky stifled a smile. Tony could be very persuasive, even if half of what he’d said had been irrelevant; he could see the cogs turning in Natasha’s head. “It’s two against one,” he said lightly and shrugged. “I’ll pick up some groceries, too.”

“Ooh!” Tony popped his head into the living room from where he’d been doing god knew what in the kitchen. “Get more coffee. We’re almost out.”

“No, we’re not,” Natasha said immediately. “I bought an entire bag of beans when I went out three days ago.”

Tony was unrepentant. “We’re almost out of coffee,” he repeated. He fluttered his lashes at Bucky. “You’ll get some more for me, won’t you?”

Against his better judgment (Tony looked awfully twitchy, probably from too much caffeine), Bucky nodded. “Anything for you, Natasha?” he asked, not expecting much. She’d barely spoken to him beyond the necessary mission details, much less about things she wanted and liked. 

Still, she seemed to be full of surprises. Natasha nodded once, brisk. “Strawberries,” she said, turning back to her work. “I’d like some strawberries, if you don’t mind.”

Bucky didn’t let his shock show on his face. “Coffee and strawberries it is,” he said and shrugged on his jacket. “I’ll be back in two hours, tops.”

He shut the door behind him, whistling idly as he made his way down the hall. He nodded at one of their nosy neighbors who poked her head out when he passed. Bucky did his best to look normal, even getting in the elevator despite his hatred of confined spaces.

The fresh air when he left the building felt good on his face after days stuck in the apartment. Bucky couldn’t wait until the end of the assignment, if only so he could go outside whenever he wanted again. Even HQ, with its large windows (which had to be a security risk), was better.

It wasn’t a long walk to the corner store, but Bucky was feeling a little reckless from being cooped up. He took the longer route, but put on his best murder face to scare people away. It was easy; he just had to think about the confusing knot of emotions waiting for him back at the apartment and his face slid into a scowl. 

Bucky, on principle, was not an emotional person. He’d learned early on that emotions got people killed, so he did his level best to be cold and logical. And for the most part, it worked. But something about Tony and Natasha was breaking down his carefully constructed walls and making him  _ feel  _ things. 

He didn’t even know what it was about them. Sure, they were attractive, but most of his coworkers were. Maybe it was Tony’s brightness, like staring into a supernova, or Natasha’s sharpness, like the perfect knife. Maybe it was their novelty (Bucky didn’t get out much). 

He didn’t know, and he didn’t like that.

Bucky was startled out of his thoughts by someone careening into him, dropping their shopping bags at his feet.

“I’m so sorry!” the harried woman said, bending down to pick up her groceries. “I wasn’t watching where I was going, it’s my fault.”

Her hair was obscuring her face, but there was something familiar about her voice. Bucky strained to place it, but came up blank. 

“It’s fine,” he said, stepping out of the way. He knew it was the polite thing to help her, but something about the woman was setting off his internal alarms. “No need to worry. Have a good one, ma’am.”

He moved to go around her, but she stuck out her arm, forcing him to twist. She tilted her head up towards him. Finally, he recognized her; she was their nosy neighbor back at the apartment. Bucky settled into mission mode; he had to kick this woman’s ass and warn Tony and Natasha. 

“Not so fast,” said the woman, a sadistic smile on her face. “We’re just getting started, Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky didn’t waste his energy on witty banter. He just rolled his eyes at her dramatics and went for the gun at his belt. She stopped him with a deep knife slash to his left arm. His right went up to staunch the blood flow, which was making him woozy already.

With a blood slick hand, Bucky reached for his gun, darting out of the way of another knife strike. The woman had caught him off guard, giving her the advantage, but Bucky only needed a second to dispatch her once he got his gun out. As he drew it, though, he felt a prick in his thigh.

The woman had moved faster than him, sticking him with a needle before he reacted. He ripped it out and tried to wrap his hand around his weapon, but his eyes were blurring. He only realized he was falling when his cheek scraped the concrete. He heard the clatter as his gun dropped to the ground. Blood was still pouring out of his arm, covering the sidewalk in sticky red.

Distantly, he registered laughter, but he couldn’t move. His eyelids were getting heavier and heavier.

Bucky’s last thought was that Tony wouldn’t get his coffee and Natasha wouldn’t get her strawberries. He wasn’t sure why that disappointed him so much.

The world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall got double chapters on saturday so now you have to suffer a cliffhanger. fair is fair, after all


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know its technically sunday but consider: time isnt real
> 
> enjoy!!

“Bucky should be back by now,” Tony fretted, almost under his breath. Natasha had batlike hearing anyway; there was no point in whispering. But Bucky had been gone for three whole days, and Tony was starting to panic.

Natasha didn’t even look up from where she was cleaning a gun. Tony had stopped worrying on the second day that she was going to shoot him; it would be too noisy. She’d just strangle him instead. 

“He’s fine,” she said dismissively. “Barnes is a big boy, he can handle himself.”

Tony bristled, but he knew she was probably right. Still, his mind kept conjuring up worst case scenarios. It hadn’t been long, but Tony was starting to  _ like  _ Bucky (and Natasha, too, if he was being honest) and he didn’t want the guy to end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Putting aside the whole pseudo-kidnapping thing, Bucky was a pretty nice guy, and not hard on the eyes.

He didn’t mind the kidnapping, though, not really. It wasn’t like he couldn’t easily escape (neither spy had searched him, a rookie mistake. He still had his phone, his emergency screwdriver, and the random pieces of scrap metal that always accumulated in his clothing. If he wanted to, he could make a pretty kickass taser). It was a nice break from having to be  _ Tony Fucking Stark  _ 24/7. Natasha and Bucky hadn’t asked him to build a single thing, even though he was sure Natasha knew who he was. 

As far as kidnappings went, Tony could confidently say it was his best one yet. It was basically vacation time, but cooler. And with more of a risk of getting himself killed, but Tony maintained that all vacations should be a little deadly or they were no fun at all.

“You’re not even a little bit worried?” he pressed Natasha. “He was supposed to be gone for two hours, and it’s been, like, seventy two.”

Well, sixty seven hours, thirty-one minutes, and about fifteen seconds, but who was counting?

There was a hint of irritation in her green eyes when she raised them to glare at him. “No,” she said succinctly. “Be quiet and let me work.”

It had taken him the better part of the week to figure out Natasha, but Tony was pretty sure he wasn’t completely in the dark anymore when it came to the redhead. She was constantly shifting her personas, shedding them like ill-fitting clothing with every other sentence. There was a fakeness in her wide, innocent eyes and Tony didn’t miss the way she tried to use her beauty like a weapon, even against the people she called her allies. 

But there was also something undeniably  _ real _ about her, too. When she was on day three of fruitless research and she snapped at him for tapping his foot, that was real. When she wordlessly dropped a coffee mug in front of him thirty minutes later, that was real, too. He had only seen her truly smile once, but Tony wanted to see it again.

There was no denying that Natasha was absolutely deadly, but Tony figured, at her core, she was probably as big a dork as everyone else. Possibly. There was a slight chance.

Tony lasted about ten fidgety seconds before he spoke again. “Maybe I could check?” he ventured hesitantly. She looked up in alarm. “Not in person!” he said quickly; he knew his limitations. “But, uh, you know who I am. You know what I can do with a computer. Just… let me do some digging?”

Natasha looked at him suspiciously. “You don’t even know what you’re looking for,” she said with an air of finality. “You wouldn’t be any help.”

That would be true… if Tony didn’t speak Russian. 

Natasha and Bucky had figured out early on that it was best to keep the confidential information away from the squishy civilian. They’d tried sticking him in the back room of the apartment all day, but the walls were thin and Tony got bored enough to rewire the lighting in the room to blink obscene things in morse code. After that, they just switched languages for the important stuff, assuming Tony wouldn’t be able to follow. And sure, his Russian wasn’t as good as his Italian, but he was no slouch, either. 

Tony really had to stop the whole lying by omission thing; it was not working out well for him. If Natasha didn’t kill him, he’d definitely try to stop doing that.

“See, about that…” he started, putting on his most innocent smile. Unfortunately, as Rhodey had informed him many times, he didn’t have an innocent bone in his body, and Natasha saw right through him.

“You speak Russian,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. If she was a little less straight-laced, Tony figured, she’d be facepalming. “You understood everything.”

“HYDRA seems like a real bag of dicks to me,” he said casually, a note of apology in his voice. “But the good news is that I can definitely get into their servers, if you give me a couple hours.”

Tony had no doubt that something had happened to Bucky. Three days was a long time to be gone on what was supposed to be a routine tail. Bucky himself had said it would take a day, maximum. And whatever happened, Tony was pretty sure HYDRA was behind it. Natasha and Bucky talked about the organization like it was the bogeyman, waiting at every corner to strike. Tony was a little afraid it might be.

Natasha stared at him for a long moment. Tony felt strangely bare, like she was looking down to his very bones. He watched her back, refusing to be cowed.  _ Stark men are made of iron _ . He was going to find Bucky anyway; it was just a matter of whether or not she’d help him.

“You care about him,” she observed placidly, in that freaky way of hers. It was like she could read his mind, which Tony really wasn’t a fan of.

“Yeah, well,” Tony huffed, pulling his phone out of his pocket and reveling in the fractional widening of her eyes. She hadn’t noticed it before. “That’s what happens when you spend a week living on top of someone else. You start to care about them.”

It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized they didn’t just apply to Bucky. Natasha had an almost thoughtful look on her face, but she mustered it into one of professionalism as soon as she caught his eye.

“Fine,” she said, waving a hand in a way Tony was sure was meant to be casual. But there was something frayed about it, something that meant her brain was trying to process too much at once. Tony was intimately familiar with the feeling. “But if you get caught, you’re on your own.”

Tony pumped his fist in victory. “You won’t regret this, Nat,” he said, mind too busy whirling through lines of code to focus on the easy affection in the nickname. “I’ll let you know when I have something.”

She might have replied, but Tony was already getting to work. A few taps on his phone screen brought up his holograms, painting the room a galaxy of blue ones and zeros. Waving a hand to pull up a keyboard, he lost himself in the methodical breaking of the firewalls, not stopping until he found a way in. It wasn’t his most delicate job, but indelicate to him was brain surgery to others. Tony was positive that he got in undetected. And in only an hour and a half; that had to be some kind of record. He didn’t take the time to dwell on it, though, immediately launching himself into reading, setting some quick parameters to narrow the search..

He was glad he was a fast reader when it took him mere seconds to scan the documents as they popped up. He searched for any hint of a Barnes, figuring HYDRA wouldn’t call Bucky by his nickname. Tony frowned when nothing came up and got rid of the filters altogether, reading instead the more recent communications. He crossed his fingers under the table; he wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. 

Tony sucked in a breath and stopped his fast flicking through data, a few words catching his eye.

“Natasha?” he called, a tremor in his voice that he hated. “What’s Bucky’s code name?”

She was at his side before he even registered her movement. “The Winter Soldier,” she answered promptly, reading the page Tony had paused at. 

  
“ _ Acquisition of the Winter Soldier was successful _ ,” Tony read dully, pointing to the sentence so Natasha could see it too. “Nat, they have Bucky.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is a little late, shit is Going Down in my life right now and im forgetting that time is a thing whoops
> 
> enjoy!!

Natasha didn’t understand most emotions, not really. Everything but a disconnected irritation had been trained out of her as a child. Even anger and hate were things she had to relearn when the itch of wrongness got to be too much. Affection was one of those things that frequently eluded her. Sure, she could charm and seduce better than anyone, but it was fake and hollow. Her sweetness lacked substance and sincerity, because she only ever brought it out for missions. 

It was fine for the Black Widow, but Natasha often found herself lost when she needed to be something other than the perfect spy. 

Tony, on the other hand, was a riot of emotions. Since they’d gotten the news of Bucky’s kidnapping (and he was Bucky now; Natasha couldn’t deny her attachment to the other spy, not when she’d reacted so viscerally when Tony had shown her the files), he’d been pacing back and forth in their small apartment. He’d practically worn a track in the floor.

“I should’ve checked earlier,” he muttered for the hundredth time. “I knew something was wrong. I should’ve checked.”

Natasha gave him the same look she had every time he said that. “Tony,” she enunciated. She had called him  _ Stark _ , at the beginning, but she was keen-eyed enough to see the flinch it elicited in the younger man. After noticing it once, she’d switched to his first name. She didn’t like seeing him upset, but she didn’t know why she cared. “It’s not your fault. You’re a civilian. Besides, I told you it was fine. Bucky is my partner and my responsibility, not yours.”

“I could’ve helped,” Tony shook his head, completely ignoring her. “Why didn’t I?”

She understood little of guilt, but she knew that it wasn’t going to help them find Bucky. “Tony,” she barked, harsher this time. She didn’t like the look it put on Tony’s face, but it was necessary. “Focus. If we’re going to find him, I need your help. Can you get back into HYDRA’s servers?”

“I never left,” Tony waved his phone significantly. His eyes seemed a little clearer now that she was giving him a task to focus his energy on. She knew the feeling. “What do you need?”

“Find out everything you can about where he’s being held,” ordered Natasha. “But don’t get caught; we don’t want to tip our hand.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. Despite the fear paling his golden skin, Natasha found him awfully beautiful. He wasn’t like Bucky, whose beauty belied his deadliness. Tony’s was soft, almost innocent, but dangerous in its own right. He might not have been a predator like her and Bucky, but he wasn’t defenseless prey, either.

“This isn’t amateur night,” said Tony, and it took Natasha a minute to remember what she had said to prompt that comment, distracted as she was. 

She nodded sharply. “Get it done, then.”

Natasha knew it wouldn’t be as simple as finding Bucky; she’d have to fight her way through the base, then drag a potentially wounded, full grown man out while still fighting. Tony wouldn’t be able to back her up on the field, but he could be her eyes and ears while she fought. It would by no means be easy, but it was  _ possible _ .

With Tony’s technical expertise, they had the location of the base in no time at all. Natasha spared a thought for how much more efficient a hacker would make her missions before packing up her weapons while Tony relayed the important details.

“It’s only four blocks away,” he told her while she strapped her guns to her thighs. His voice was wrought with guilt. “He’s been four blocks away for  _ three days _ , and-”

“And we’re going to get him now,” Natasha cut him off. Guilt would get them nowhere. They had to focus. From her bag of supplies, she dug out three earpieces, pocketing two and handing one over to Tony. “Put it in; you’re going to be directing me, because I don’t have time to study the plans like I want to.”

Tony accepted it and slipped it into his ear trustingly. “Is that safe?” he asked earnestly. 

“Probably not,” she admitted. She was a liar, yes, and she couldn’t even say she was honest when it mattered. But something about Tony made her tell the truth. “But it’ll be fine. I’m very good at this.”

Tony was closer than she’d realized, when she glanced up from sliding her knives into their sheaths at her hips. He was a few inches taller than her, she noticed, and she had to tip her chin up to look him in the eyes. There was something broken in his gaze, desperate for any kind of reassurance. Sympathy twinged in her chest; he had been thrown into a game of life and death without any kind of preparation, but he’d stuck it out with them instead of just walking away like she knew he could’ve. And now he was helping her with a potentially deadly mission. The boy had to be  _ terrified _ . 

He hid it admirably, but Natasha was very, very good. She let herself soften invitingly, just enough that he could find some sort of comfort in her, if he wanted to. It wasn’t a hardship; she wanted to comfort him, too.

Tony leaned in for a kiss, and she didn’t stop him.

It was chaste and sweet, barely more than a pressing of lips. His lips were chapped, she noted, and bitten from anxiety. There was a promise in his kiss, and a goodbye.

Natasha had never kissed someone just for pleasure, because she liked a person and wanted to show them. It was...  _ odd _ , but not unwelcome. She waited for Tony to take control, to push for more like everyone always did, but he stayed light as air.

“Be safe,” Tony whispered, pulling away. “Don’t die.”

His anxiety was a tangible thing, for as much as he tried to hide it. She had the feeling that he was letting her see it, and she felt strangely honored. “I’ve never failed a mission,” she reassured him, squeezing one of his hands in a rare gesture of comfort. She wanted to kiss him again, but she didn’t have time for the confusion it was sure to bring her. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you your Bucky back in one piece.”

And that was just it, wasn’t it? Because Tony didn’t want her, not really. He wanted Bucky and she was just a convenient stand-in. For however tender his kiss was, it wasn’t meant for her. 

Something flashed in Tony’s eyes, there and gone. “Get  _ yourself _ back in one piece, too, Nat,” he said. “What am I going to do without my favorite redheaded spy?”

“Something stupid, probably,” she teased. She wrapped her arms around him when he stepped impossibly closer, allowing herself to take comfort from someone else. It was a heady feeling.

“Exactly,” Tony grinned at her, unrestrained. She’d never seen a smile like it on him, and she wanted to kill whoever had taught him to hide it away. “And no one wants that. Come back home safe, okay? Both of you.”

“Both of us, huh?” Natasha said, considering. She examined the light flush on Tony’s cheeks and found herself warming to the idea, even though she knew that wasn’t what Tony had been suggesting (not that he seemed opposed, though). She gave him a smirk full of promise and kissed him on the cheek. “Well, we’ll see how Bucky feels about that, but you’ll hear no objections from me. In the meantime, though, I need you watching the cameras.”

Tony visibly blinked himself out of a daze. “Yeah,” he stuttered. “The cameras. On it. I won’t let you down, Nat.”

“I know, Antoshka,” she said, checking that her guns were in her holsters. “I trust you.”

With that, she left him behind, not even waiting to see his reaction. She slunk out of the relative safety of the apartment as silently as a spider spun its web, clinging to the shadows with her mission at the front of her mind. She had a partner to find.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

Bucky had no idea where he was. His brain felt muddled and slow, and he heard everything as if he were underwater. There was a curious lack of sensation in his left arm, but he was too groggy to examine it closely. The blinding pain in his shoulder was quickly bringing him back to awareness, though. 

He blinked his eyes open as best he could, but his vision wouldn’t focus. He tried to raise his arms up to rub his eyes, but a strap bit into his right wrist, letting him know that he definitely wasn’t going anywhere. He still couldn’t feel his left arm. 

Slowly, memories started to trickle back. His breath came faster and faster as he remembered the woman on the street, the prick of the needle in his thigh, the slice of a knife in his arm, and the woozy feeling that came with blood loss. Even as he panicked, his mind worked, as sharp as ever. There was only one explanation that fit.

He’d been taken by HYDRA. 

Mind reeling, Bucky tried to relax his muscles and look like he was still asleep, but the heart monitor gave away his rising panic. The beeping got faster and louder, no matter how much he tried to take deep breaths and calm himself. 

“He’s waking up,” a voice said from somewhere off to the side. “Sedate him again.”

The jig was up’ Bucky started thrashing, still restrained. He hoped to be able to weaken the straps, but they didn’t give. A shout of alarm sounded to his right, and suddenly there were hands on his shoulders, pushing him down. He twisted his head to bite at one of the hands holding him down, but there was another prick of a needle and the world went hazy again.

He felt his muscles relax as he floated, as much as he tried to fight it. The world was going fuzzy again, but he could feel the hands retreat as what he assumed where his guards retreated back to their positions. 

If he had the muscle control, he would’ve flipped them off.  _ Assholes _ .

Bucky clung desperately to his last bit of consciousness. The drugs weren’t strong enough to knock him out completely, but they were pretty damn close. He wasn’t exactly sure what point it served to stay awake, because it wasn’t like he’d be getting anywhere on his own, but he figured if Natasha or Tony came, it would be better for him to be at least semi-awake.

Oh, god, he thought. Natasha and Tony.

He desperately hoped they were okay; he hadn’t been able to warn them about HYDRA. He didn’t know if he wanted them coming after him; even though he knew they could both take care of themselves and then some, the idea of them being in danger because of him sat wrong with Bucky. On the other hand, he was definitely fucked if they didn’t.

His dilemma didn’t last long, though, because a loud noise startled him out of his thoughts, as well as the cries of alarm from the guards. With difficulty, Bucky peeled his eyes open, trying to find the source. He saw the door slam against the wall, a shadowy form standing in the entrance. A curious sense of warmth filled him when he realized who had come to his rescue. 

Natasha moved like a wraith from man to man, looking a little like death personified. Bucky was glad she was on his side, if he was being honest. She was  _ terrifying _ . Idly, he wondered how many men she had taken down on her own just to get to him, and hoped she didn’t see his sappy smile.

Natasha wiped blood off of her cheek, looking like an avenging angel. She barely looked at him as she yanked an IV line out of his arm. It hurt, of course, but that was secondary. When she tossed her hair behind her shoulder, Bucky noticed the communicator in her ear. 

“You said three, Tosya,” she huffed, wiping the blood off of the blade of her knife. She was clearly not speaking to him, so he stayed silent. “I definitely counted four. I thought you were some sort of math genius?”

“ _ The fourth one was in my blind spot, _ ” Bucky heard Tony’s voice faintly through her earpiece. “ _ But it seems like you did okay. How’s Bucky? _ ”

Natasha appraised Bucky. Her eyes were like knives, and Bucky decided he was on way too many drugs to try to understand what they were telling him. Instead, he just waited for her judgement. 

“Alive,” she said finally. She leaned over him, fitting a com unit in his ear and getting to work on the straps. “A little worse for wear, but nothing unfixable.”

“Good,” said Tony, no small amount of relief in his voice. Bucky was pretty sure he blushed to hear it, but Natasha kindly didn’t mention it. There was something professional and authoritative about the way Tony spoke, though, almost like he really was a spy. “You guys need to get out of there, then. I’m blocking the doors from opening, but they’re starting to just cut through them. You’re going to be pinned down if you wait too long. Bucky, are you able to move?”

Bucky tested each of his limbs, to varying degrees of success. He had a sinking feeling about the fate of his left arm, but he refused to look. They didn’t have time for him to have a crisis right then. “Slowly, but yeah,” he decided, closing his eyes against the onslaught of nausea.  _ His arm _ .

A small hand on his face brought him back to reality. He leaned into the touch, desperately seeking comfort. Natasha’s fingers were still sticky with blood, but it didn’t matter to him.

“ _ Yasha, _ ” she said, uncharacteristically soft, but the core of steel remained unchanged. “We need to move. You know that.”

“I know,” Bucky gritted out, forcing his eyes open to meet hers. “Natasha,  _ my arm _ .”

There was no pity in Natasha’s eyes, just empathy. It was a weird look on her, but not an unpleasant one. Not a fake one, either. “I know,” she said, pressing their foreheads together. It was a grounding touch, and Bucky felt something in himself settle.

“How am I supposed to-” he cut himself off at the sound of a distant gunshot. It was a harsh and sobering reminder of where he was. Bucky took a deep breath and shoved the writhing ball of emotion deep, deep down. There just wasn’t time for it. “I’m okay. I’m not freaking out, not even a little bit. I’m okay.”

“You don’t have to be,” she offered. “But here, and now? You must. When we get out of this, though, you understand?”

“I’m not freaking out,” he repeated, tearing his gaze away. He couldn’t handle the emotion in her eyes. Everything hurt: his head, his arm, his heart. He wanted to just lay down and close his eyes, but that wasn’t exactly an option. He sat up, but he couldn’t make himself go further. 

“Of course not,” Natasha said, tipping his chin up to look at her. She gave him a reassuring smile. “What’s there to freak out about? You’re going to be just fine. Now, are you coming, or do I have to carry you? I didn’t come all this way to leave you behind, you know.”

Bucky got to his feet, head turned to the right. He overbalanced at first, not compensating for the loss of weight on his left side, but Natasha caught him easily. She didn’t say anything, so neither did he. However, he did let himself lean on her.

“When you get out the door, head left,” Tony said quietly, like he didn’t want to interrupt the moment. “Then take a right, and you can head out the way you came in, Nat. It’s clear for now, so move fast.”

“We will,” Natasha promised, gripping Bucky’s arm tightly. She drew a gun with her other hand, her aim perfectly steady.

Bucky let everything go, falling into mission mode. “See you soon, Tony,” he said, and followed the redhead out the door, weaponless and trusting. 

Natasha and Tony would get him out safely, he knew. There was no need to worry about that. And everything else was a problem for later, anyway.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

Tony took the com out of his ear with a near-silent sigh of relief. He ran a hand through his hair and unclenched his teeth, trying to relax after the stress of the mission. Bucky and Nat were on their way back, alive, if a little worse for wear. He hadn’t accidentally killed either of them with his abysmal skills, which was always a plus. All in all, it was a pretty successful outcome.

Tony laid his head down on the table and groaned. He changed his mind; he was definitely not cut out for this spy stuff. But he couldn’t deny the small flare of satisfaction in his gut when Nat told him they’d done it, when he’d  _ helped  _ someone. It was a heady feeling, but Tony knew, realistically, it wasn’t for him.

Besides, he had other responsibilities. He couldn’t run off to play secret agent whenever he wanted. SI needed him, even if Howard refused to let him do much besides design guns and bombs. Never mind that he could triple their profits with his green energy designs; all he was good for was making things blow up. 

When Tony’s phone rang with almost poetic timing, he considered not answering. The weeks he’d spent with Bucky and Natasha had been some of the best, even though he’d come pretty close to being killed on more than one occasion. He didn’t want it to end, even though he knew it had to. He was lucky they’d let him stick around as long as they did; it wasn’t like he was useful to them.

With an imperceptible wince, Tony hit  _ accept  _ on the call. 

“Howard,” he greeted neutrally, not letting his anxiety show. At least over the phone, he couldn’t smell the whiskey on his father’s breath. As strong as he pretended to be, he was still the terrified little boy who wanted to please his dad, even though he knew he never would. Tony suppressed a shudder and waited.

“Boy,” Howard answered, less precise than usual. He must’ve been on his third or fourth glass, then. “Where the hell have you been? No, I don’t care. As long as it doesn’t show up in the papers tomorrow.” There was the clinking sound of Howard pouring himself another drink. “Game time is over. You’ve forgotten your responsibilities to SI. That’s unacceptable, Anthony.”

Tony bit his tongue so that he didn’t say the first thing that came to mind. He’d learned early that there was no point in fighting Howard. He never won, and it just hurt worse later. Tony took a deep breath and pasted on a smile, even though no one could see. “I have several new designs for R&D,” he said, ignoring the churning in his stomach. “I’d be happy to send those over tonight and go over them with the engineers tomorrow.”

Howard scoffed loudly. “Not like they’ll be any good,” he dismissed under his breath, but just loud enough that Tony could hear him. “If you don’t show tomorrow, and I have to send someone to find you, I will be very upset, and I guarantee you will be, too. Get back to work.”

The dial tone cut Tony off before he could say goodbye, not that he particularly wanted to. Just another  _ great  _ conversation with his father, he thought sardonically. Tony set down the phone and wiped his eyes, taking a second to compose himself. 

Luckily, Tony had always been good at compartmentalizing, so he shoved the unpleasantness into the box in his head with all the rest of his daddy issues to never think about again. He stood almost mechanically, grabbing his phone off the desk and sliding it into his pocket. Slowly, he went around the apartment, picking up only what was his. The sooner he could get out of there, the better. So he left the blanket Bucky had picked him up when he mentioned that the apartment was freezing and the socks that Natasha had thrown at his face with a complaint that his steps were too loud. He ignored the leftover pizza with toppings only he liked, the special coffee beans he’d snuck out to grab, and the scraps of electronics that always seemed to collect around him.

In almost no time at all, he had the essentials shoved in his pockets. Tony shrugged on his jacket and took one last, sentimental look at the safehouse. It had been a good few weeks, but it was time to leave. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to get away before Natasha and Bucky got back. 

Still, he paused to scribble a note that he left on the table. It was barely anything, just a simple  _ I’m leaving, don’t follow me _ , but it was better than letting Natasha and Bucky think he’d been kidnapped, or something. He signed it with his full name; Bucky deserved to know who he was, after everything. 

The universe was clearly out to get him, because as soon as he capped the pen, the apartment door flew open and Natasha, carrying Bucky, limped inside. She was bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow, and he was missing a  _ whole fucking arm  _ (Tony’s mind was already whirling with designs for a prothetic, but that was neither here nor there), but they were both alive. Choking down the guilt threatening to suffocate him, Tony watched Natasha set Bucky gently down at the table, whispering calming things to him in Russian. 

“Tony, get the first aid kit,” Natasha ordered. She barely looked at him, trusting that he would listen to her. 

And he would, of course he would. Tony pulled open the cabinet with the supplies, setting them down on the table quickly and backing up. Maybe he could sneak out while Natasha was tending to Bucky. 

He inched closer to the door, so ashamed he thought he would throw up. But it was better to leave, rather than expose the pair to Howard’s wrath. Because for all that they were badass spies, Howard had his fingers in every pie there was. Tony had no doubt he could hurt Natasha and Bucky if he found out that Tony was with them instead of at SI. Tony wouldn’t be able to live with himself if that happened. 

He had his hand on the knob when Bucky spoke.

“Tony,” he said carefully, scanning the paper in front of him. Tony felt his heart sink to the floor. He’d hoped Bucky would be too distracted by Natasha’s medical care to notice the note under the box of first aid supplies. “What is this?”

“He’s leaving,” Natasha said from the other side of the room. She hadn’t even read the note, just him. Her eyes were piercing, like daggers, and Tony wished she’d turn them somewhere else. “Aren’t you, Tony?”

“I am,” answered Tony, keeping his voice steady. The only sign of his anxiety was his hand tightening around the doorknob. “And you’re not going to stop me.”

“But why?” Bucky asked brokenly. He looked like he was about to cry and Tony’s heart  _ shattered _ . Still, he couldn’t back down.

“You basically kidnapped me,” he sneered, going for cruel disinterest and unwillingly imitating his father. He thought he managed pretty well, but it fractured something inside him to do it. “You can’t have honestly thought I wanted to be here. I faked it so I could plan my escape without you being suspicious, obviously.”

Bucky shook his head. “You’re lying,” he said shakily. “Natasha, he’s lying.”

“He is,” she said, cool and emotionless. She strode towards him, every inch the predator. “Why are you  _ really  _ leaving?”

Tony didn't back down, not from her. He knew she wouldn’t hurt him, no matter how much he hurt her. “Because I want to, Natasha,” he spat, tasting ashes in his mouth from burning bridges. “What, did you really think you meant something to me? Either of you?”

“Yes,” Bucky whispered. 

_ You did,  _ Tony wanted to say.  _ You do _ . 

“Well, you were wrong,” he said instead, twisting the knife just that last little bit more. He could see when Bucky’s face shuttered, when he dropped his gaze and clenched his fist. “I don’t want to stay. I can’t stay.”

“Don’t want to, or can’t?” Natasha caught his slip keenly. “They’re different things, Tosya.”

“Does it matter?” he tried to keep the pain out of his voice, but he was pretty sure he failed. But he forced himself to stand up straight.  _ Stark men are made of iron.  _ “I’m going.”

Natasha looked at him for a long moment, the silence broken only by Bucky’s harsh breathing. “Then go,” she said simply, and turned away. 

Tony ached to reach out, to step back to the table and fix things, but Howard’s words echoed in his ears.  _ If you don’t show tomorrow, and I have to send someone to find you, I will be very upset, and I guarantee you will be, too. _ Howard wasn’t one for idle threats; Tony had no doubt that he meant every word. This was the best option for everyone, in the long run.    
  
It felt like he was trying to convince himself when he thought it.

He turned the knob and stepped out of the apartment without another word. The door shut near-silently behind him, a barely audible end to some of the best weeks of his short life. He stood there for a minute, half-hoping and half-fearing the door opening again.

It didn’t. Tony walked away, head held high.

(He barely made it three blocks before he was collapsing against the side of a random building, sobbing so hard it hurt his whole body.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

Tony, Natasha noticed, looked like a cornered animal. There was fear in his eyes as he lashed out, effortlessly hitting their every soft spot. Even as she stiffened in anger, her mind traced the pain in the lines of his shoulders and the resignation in the curve of his mouth. When he fled, she didn’t stop him. 

(There were few things more dangerous than a cornered animal, and one with the technological genius to turn anything into a weapon wasn’t the one she wanted to try to block.)

She held Bucky still with one delicate hand on his remaining shoulder, gripping tightly. The man was still too controlled by his emotions, already raring to run after Tony. To stop him or to yell at him, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to find out, either.

They both knew that Tony meant none of what he’d said, but it still  _ hurt.  _ Natasha could barely figure out her own emotions, truthfully. Because she  _ liked  _ Tony, and that was foreign enough for her, and then he’d left her. He’d left them both, her and Bucky, like he wasn’t taking a piece of their closely guarded hearts with him. 

He’d left, and he wasn’t coming back. 

It was  _ fine _ , Natasha decided viciously. It was fine that he didn’t want her, that he didn’t want them. She didn’t want him, either. She was the Black Widow, and the Black Widow didn’t have time to get distracted by petty infatuations with pretty boys.

(The Black Widow was also a liar. Especially to herself.)

“Natasha,” Bucky said carefully, drawing her out of her head. He was still staring at Tony’s note, like he could change it if he read it enough. He sounded raw, broken, and Natasha couldn’t help but hate Tony a little bit for leaving  _ now _ , of all times. Now, when Bucky needed him more than ever. Natasha was lousy at offering comfort and she knew it. She was helpless in the face of his pain. But she could help with the confusion in his voice when he continued, “Why is this signed by Tony  _ Stark _ ?”

“Because you’re apparently the only person in the world who can pick up a baby billionaire and media darling and not recognize him,” she explained, wincing internally when it came out sharper than she meant for it to. “I’ve known since we met.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” Bucky shook his head, his beautiful features creased with anger. “Why not?”

Natasha stopped short. If she was being honest, she had no idea why she hadn’t said anything. Maybe it was because she knew what it was like to run from a name, a label, that wasn’t hers and yet  _ was _ . Maybe she knew what it was like to want to shed her mask and just  _ be _ , for a moment. Maybe she was just a coward. Natasha didn’t know anymore. 

“I just didn’t, okay?” she answered, a dangerous edge to her voice, warning Bucky not to push further into the minefield that was her head. “Can we focus on what’s actually important, please?”

She heard her voice crack on the last syllable, and she knew Bucky was sharp enough to catch it, too. God, but she was slipping. She took a moment, trying to organize her thoughts, to rise to that place of cool detachment, but it was harder than usual, what with the anger burning through her veins. 

Still, she wasn’t the only survivor of the Red Room because she was unskilled. It took longer than it should’ve, but she was the Black Widow again when Bucky answered her. 

“Sure, Natasha,” he snapped. “What would you like to focus on? That I’m down an arm? How about us having not completed our mission? Better yet, that a civilian has classified knowledge and is running loose in the city? You tell me, Natasha, because I have no idea.”

“The arm,” she decided. For all his bluster, Natasha could see how close Bucky was to coming apart at the seams. In their line of work, an injury like that could end his usefulness. Plus, he had to be in pain. She could deal with a physical problem like this, and maybe avoiding the emotional one would solve it. “We need to get back to HQ. They’ll know how to handle this.”

“No way,” Bucky shook his head. The line of his jaw was tight with pain, but his eyes were filled with steel. “We can’t go back with this many fuckups and nothing to show for it. Carter and Fury will have our heads. We need to finish this first.”

Natasha glared at him. “You’re missing an  _ arm _ ,” she said, as if it wasn’t obvious. She didn’t understand why Bucky was being so stupid. Sure, it ate at her to report a failed mission, but it was better than Bucky not getting the medical care he needed. 

“And it’ll still be missing in the time it takes you to kill Pierce,” he argued. She admired his dedication to the mission, she had to admit. “Obviously, I won’t be much help, but I doubt you’ll need it.”

“I can’t just leave you here,” protested Natasha, ignoring the fact that only a few weeks ago, she would’ve. Technically, Bucky wasn’t in any danger. HYDRA had stitched up his arm pretty well, so it wasn’t like he was bleeding out. She’d bandaged him up to reduce the risk of infection. And he was still perfectly capable of defending himself, should he need to. 

The spy within her, the cold part focused on the mission and only the mission, knew he would be just fine. She could leave him here and do her job. He probably wouldn’t keel over and die in the time it took her to assassinate Pierce. And if he did, well, he wasn’t really her problem. 

But she just… _ couldn’t _ . She couldn’t retreat to that cold place, where affection had no hold on her. She was afraid for him, and wasn’t that a new feeling? Natasha didn’t voice any of her thoughts, but she was sure Bucky could read them on her face. She was still slipping. 

“You will,” Bucky ordered gently. He cracked a small smile, but it wasn’t exactly reassuring. “I’ll be fine here. I’ll be less fine when Fury rips off my other arm for fucking up this badly. Finish the mission, Nat.”

“I…” her opposition was crumbling. She wanted to go back to doing what she knew: spying, infiltrating, killing. The feel of a gun handle under her fingers was more familiar than the rush of emotion she was feeling right then. “Fine. But if something happens to you, I’m never going to stop saying I told you so.”

Bucky held up his hand in a mockery of an oath. “I solemnly swear not to die while you’re gone.”

Natasha was closer to him than she’d realized. “Don’t joke about that,” she hissed through her teeth. “It’s not fucking funny.”

“I’m sorry,” he seemed to realize that he’d crossed the line, and he tilted his head down in apology. 

She wasn’t having it. Suddenly, she was sick of everything. Sick of her anger, sick of her fear, sick of the negativity crawling up her throat and threatening to choke her. Natasha, by nature, wasn’t an impulsive person, but she decided to throw caution to the wind.

She bent down, grabbed Bucky’s chin in a harsh grip, and kissed him. 

It was nothing like kissing Tony. There was no softness here, in a kiss filled with clashing teeth and tongues. It was like they were fighting, but it wasn’t Bucky that she was mad at. Natasha pulled back a little, but Bucky reeled her back in, doing something with his tongue that almost made her forget that everything was going to pieces around her. She let herself have a moment to get lost in him before tugging away for air.

She stared at Bucky, chest heaving. “Natasha,” he whispered, bringing his hand to his lips. 

“I’ll be back,” she swore, turning away abruptly. “I’m going to kill Pierce and finish the mission.”

“Nat,” Bucky repeated, confusion starting to cloud his face. “What-”

Natasha didn’t want to explain why she’d kissed him, like he obviously wanted her to. She didn’t want to have a feelings talk; she wanted to go and kill a HYDRA leader. “I’ll see you soon,” she promised again, walking out the door. She didn’t look back. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

Bucky was, honestly, not having a great time. 

There was the arm thing, which was a whole can of worms that he didn’t want to open until he physically had to, lest he go into shock, and the kidnapping earlier. There was also the small fact that both of his partners had up and left him, one after lying about his identity for weeks (Bucky understood it, he did, but he had no idea how Tony called himself a genius if he honestly thought that Bucky would give a shit about his last name). 

On top of all of that, and there was a lot of it, Natasha had kissed him and sent all of his carefully controlled emotions into a screaming mess. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, because he did, to almost a scary degree. He just… he liked Tony, too. Bucky had always been one to fall hard and fast for snark and competence, gender notwithstanding, and both Tony and Natasha checked off all of his boxes. But he’d never wanted two people at once before, had never wanted to kiss them and hold their hands and do all of the sappy couple shit that would get his spy card revoked if he voiced it.

Bucky was teetering on the edge of falling in love with both of them, and he had no idea how either of them felt about it.

Natasha was easier. For all she was a conglomeration of masks and falsehoods, there was little artifice about her when she was with him and Tony. She’d kissed him, he knew, because she’d wanted to. He could read her well enough to tell that she cared, though it was tempered with anger and fear. She’d fled all the same, though.

Tony, by all accounts, should’ve been easier to figure out than Natasha. But Bucky was left questioning every touch of his, every moment where it felt like they could’ve tipped into something more, because how much of it had been an act? How much of it had been to keep his cover? It wasn’t fair to doubt and judge him like that, Bucky knew, but feelings rarely listened to logic. 

Honestly, Bucky would rather lose his other arm than deal with the tangled mess that was interpersonal relationships. 

With a groan, he leaned his head back against the arm of the couch, where he’d moved when he realized that it would probably take Natasha a while to finish the mission. The medication she had given him before she’d left was starting to wear off, and the burning agony in his left shoulder was returning. Really, Bucky decided, the universe was out to get him. That was the only explanation.

Bucky closed his eyes, trying to get comfortable. If Natasha was going to take her time, he could at least catch up on the sleep he’d been ignoring for the duration of the mission. He drifted off as best he could, but he couldn’t quite shut off his awareness altogether. He was still on edge, waiting, waiting.

(Waiting for what, he had no idea, Waiting for the door to open maybe, for Natasha or Tony to come back. Waiting to not be alone.

It wasn’t that Bucky couldn’t handle being by himself. He could; he’d managed quite well his whole life. But he’d gotten used to having people around him, and he’d started to like it, if he was being honest with himself. The loneliness after it all was jarring.

But he could handle it. He always did.)

Bucky wasn’t sure how long it was-- long enough that his head was clearer and his stomach was growling, though-- before the scrape of a key in the door lock startled him out of his half-sleep. Instantly, he was on high alert, reaching his arm under the sofa for a weapon.

Or, he would’ve reached, if the movement of his stitched stump hadn’t sent a flare of agony through his shoulder. He cursed loudly, grappling for the gun with his other hand while gasping for breath. Despite  _ knowing  _ it had to be Natasha at the door, old habits died hard. He had his weapon trained on the door before all of the locks finished turning. 

The door swung open and Natasha walked into the apartment. She noted everything with her clinical, professional eye, but Bucky could see the cracks where concern peeked through. Her eyes wept over him, shaking from the pain in his arm but steady with his aim. His breathing was slowly returning to normal, but he still felt locked in place.

“You can put that down now,” she said finally, coming over to the sofa. He lowered his arm down to his side somewhat shakily, but she didn’t comment on it. “It’s finished. Pierce is dead.”

Bucky looked at the clock on the wall. “That didn’t take long,” he remarked. It had barely been a full day since she’d left. 

“I told you I’d be back soon,” she scoffed and sat down next to him. “Did you doubt me?”

“No, I just thought you’d be more careful,” he clicked his tongue, looking her up and down. Her face was bloodied, and there were smaller scrapes tearing the fabric of her catsuit, but nothing looked broken and all of her limbs were still attached to her body. “How much of a mess did you make?”

Natasha sniffed haughtily. “I completed the mission. That’s what’s important here.”

_ The mission is important _ , Bucky heard.  _ Not me _ . It took a lot to stop his frown; Natasha didn’t want his sympathy. She’d spoken like she was stating a fact. The worst part was, he knew that, in her place, he would sound exactly the same. 

Bucky cleared his throat, trying to get his mind off of the flat inflection of Natasha’s voice. “So, what now?” he asked. 

“We go back,” she said simply. “The mission is over. Hopefully, we can put this all behind us as a bad memory.”

He made sure not to wince. He wasn’t sure he wanted to put the mission-- to put Natasha, Tony, and his mixed-up feelings for them-- behind him, but she clearly did. It was fine, he was fine with that, if that’s what she wanted. 

“Some of us more easily than others,” he jabbed, wiggling his stump deliberately. So maybe he wasn’t fine with it. He didn’t take any pleasure at the hurt look in her eyes, though. It wasn’t fair to take out his own anger on her, and the arm wasn’t her fault anyway, but he was scared and confused and didn’t know how to deal with that in any way except shooting a gun. Still, he lowered his eyes. “Sorry. That was rude.”

Natasha looked at him for a long moment. “Come on,” she said finally. She didn’t sound angry at him, just… sad. “I’ll help you down to the car.”

Truthfully, Bucky remembered next to none of the trip back to HQ. He remembered a car alarm going off for about half a second before it was silenced with Natasha’s Russian cursing. He remembered strangely gentle hands urging him into the car, rough with calluses on the trigger fingers. He remembered those same hands shaking him awake when the (definitely stolen, Bucky knew that much) car came to a stop in front of a familiar building.

“We’re here,” Natasha announced, startling him back into awareness. He hadn’t realized how easy it would be for him to slip out of spy mode with her watching his back, but it wasn’t exactly an unwelcome realization. 

Bucky accepted her help getting out of the car, though he dropped her hand as soon as he was steady on his feet. He needed to learn how to be without her, and fast, because she clearly didn’t want him past what was necessary. _Put this all behind us_ _as a bad memory_ , she’d said, and Bucky figured she’d be sticking to that.

(Still, he could feel her hand as a ghostly support on his back as he walked, and he couldn’t help but to lean into it just a little bit.)

Bucky was well aware of the eyes on him and Natasha and they entered the building. He was missing an arm and doing his best murder face, while Natasha was bloody and had a bruise forming high on her cheekbone; how were they expected to blend in? He didn’t let it bother him, though, and kept walking. After debrief, he told himself, he could take a nice, long, well-deserved nap, and no one could stop him. He just had to make it through debrief. 

“Ducky, I know you’re moping about something or other, but please, stop glaring at everyone. You’re scaring the agents,” a female voice came around the corner, and Bucky instantly perked up, a healthy dose of fear straightening his spine.

He knew that voice;  _ everyone _ knew that voice. Anyone who didn’t know what Peggy Carter, founder and former director of SHIELD, sounded like was living under a rock. Bucky had heard her ordering agents around like a drill sergeant, yelling at obstinate senators, and even deadly calm on the wrong end of a loaded gun, but he’d never heard her sound so fond before. It almost made him wonder if he really was hearing Carter, or if it was some kind of pain-induced hallucination (the painkillers had completely worn off). 

But then the woman rounded the corner with a shorter boy in a hoodie holding a case and Bucky had to resist the urge to snap to attention. She took them in with a severe frown, cataloguing his missing arm and Natasha’s ripped up uniform with calm eyes. 

“So I take it the mission didn’t go well?” she asked, a hint of humor in her crisply accented voice. The boy didn’t even look up from his phone. 

Bucky watched Natasha’s eyes narrow a little, always confrontational at the suggestion of failure. “The mission went fine,” she answered. “We hit a few unexpected snags, but we accomplished everything that needed to be done.” 

“I’m sure the director will be happy to hear that,” Carter smiled, somewhat conciliatory, but still sincere. “Are you on your way to his office now? Or should you stop in the infirmary first?”

Bucky knew, logically, that he should go to the infirmary before anything else (he was missing an  _ arm _ , for god’s sakes, and Natasha was definitely in more pain than she was letting on), but his pride wouldn’t allow him to, at least not before debriefing. He glanced at Natasha, who shook her head minutely and glared at him.

“We’re fine,” he ignored her and turned back to Carter. “We just need to see Director Fury for debrief.”

“Idiot,” the boy muttered. He’d been silent, almost going unnoticed until then, but he’d spoken just soft enough that Bucky had to strain to hear it. The voice sounded just on the edge of familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it...

Carter clearly heard it, though. She rolled her eyes, fixing the boy with a stern look. “Anthony,  _ behave _ , and pretend like you weren’t raised by wolves, please,” she sighed, batting the hood off of the boy’s head and snatching his phone away. “You know how I feel about those hoodies, always hiding your face.”

“Aunt Peggy, no-” the boy protested, but it was too late. His eyes caught Bucky’s, and Bucky felt all the air leave his chest. A familiar face was staring back at them, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there. Natasha stiffened next to him, almost imperceptibly. 

“Agent Barnes, Agent Romanov,” Carter’s eyes twinkled with mischief as she grabbed the boy’s arm to stop him from bolting. Every muscle in his body was visibly tense, but he obligingly put on a charming grin that Bucky knew all too well. “Let me introduce my godson, Tony."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!

Tony was fucked, and not even in a fun way.

He’d made it back to SI in time, and his designs had even gotten the begrudging nod of near-approval from Howard (and  _ god _ , the manipulation was so blatant and clear, the way Howard kept him on his leash with a little bit of acknowledgement, and it was Natasha and Bucky’s voices in his head pointing it out, but he couldn’t help but to fall for it again and again). He’d even gotten stolen away from R&D by his Aunt Peggy, someone who even Howard wouldn’t dream of crossing. 

He should’ve realized that when his day was going well, it was only because the universe was winding up to punch him in the face. The punch came in the form of Natasha and Bucky, bruised and bleeding but clearly successful in their mission, standing in front of him and looking like they’d seen a ghost. He was the ghost, he knew, and he’d never wished more for the power to turn invisible. 

“Meet my godson, Tony,” Tony could faintly hear his aunt over the pounding of his heart in his ears. The stares of his former partners (and could he even call them that?) were pinning him in place, boring down to his bones. He wanted to look away, but something kept him locked in their gazes. Still, well aware of their company, he pasted on his best smile, hoping it covered some of the cracks in his composure.

“Nice to meet you,” he said evenly. He didn’t extend his hand to shake theirs, like he knew was polite, because he thought if he touched them once he wouldn’t be able to stop. So he kept his hands clenched around the handle of his case and his gaze impersonal. 

Natasha was the first to recover. “Nice to meet you, as well,” she said brusquely. Ever the consummate professional, there was no hint of recognition in her voice. “But if you’ll excuse us, we have to get to a debriefing.”

“Of course,” Tony said, his smile not wavering. “I have to get down to the labs, anyway.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “See you around, agents.”

Bucky’s eyes seemed to cut right through him, and Tony, at heart, was a coward. He looked away first. He didn’t watch them walk away. He couldn’t.

He didn’t look up again until the retreating footsteps were out of earshot. Even then, he spun in the opposite direction, taking the long way to the labs, if only to make absolutely certain that he wouldn’t run into the agents again. 

“Now, darling, care to tell me what that was about?” his aunt asked, falling in step beside him. 

Tony shook his head. He’d actually forgotten she was there, watching the whole tension-filled interaction with her hawk eyes. “Not really,” he admitted, not looking at her. She could read him (and anyone, really) far too well for his comfort.

“Hmm, so you  _ don’t  _ want to talk about how the agents you just spent the last several weeks with-- despite both of them hating working with others, by the way-- looked at you like they want nothing more than to…  _ hug  _ you?” Peggy teased, a wry note in her voice.

He whirled around in shock. “W-what?” he spluttered. Distantly, he was at least happy that she wasn’t using her judgemental voice, like Howard would’ve, and that she’d even noticed he was gone. “How the fuck do you know about that?”

“First of all, language. Second, Ducky, if you think there’s anything that happens with my agents that I don’t know, you’d be dead wrong,” she raised an eyebrow at him. “And when you go off the grid for several weeks, I investigate, of course. Remember what happened last time?”

Tony scowled. “I was fine, last time,” he huffed. “And stop tracking me!”

“Stop running off with spies,” Peggy countered, and Tony had to admit that she had a point. Not that he’d been in any danger, though; he trusted Natasha and Bucky not to hurt him, and he trusted them to protect him if he needed it. It wasn’t like that trust mattered, after everything, but it was still there on his end. 

“In my defense, it was one time,” Tony shrugged. He opened the door to the SHIELD labs. “Are you coming in, or do you have to go do boring paperwork shit?”

Peggy made a face. “Paperwork, I’m afraid,” she answered. “But you have fun down here. I’ll come collect you when I’m done, shall I?”

Tony was already halfway into his creating mindset, but he blew her a kiss. “Take your time,” he said, grabbing a table to set up at. “Love you, Aunt Pegs.”

“Have fun, darling,” Peggy said, and then she was leaving, and Tony was alone in the lab.

He took one breath, then another, trying to will the tightness in his chest away. He could’ve gone his whole life without having to see the hurt in Natasha and Bucky’s eyes. It wasn’t like he didn’t know he’d hurt them; he’d done it on purpose, after all. But seeing the effects was much different than setting off the bomb. 

Tony had always been far too good at ignoring the consequences of his actions. Selfishly, he’d wanted to ignore these ones, too. But now, he couldn't get the agents’ faces out of his head. It was what he deserved, for hurting them so callously, but it still sucked.

Hopefully, though, his project could make up for a little bit of what he’d done. He set his case down on the lab table and opened it to reveal a gleaming silver arm, tailored as best he could to Bucky’s original arm. He’d come to the SHIELD labs to work because here, he could pass it off to some other engineer to give to Bucky, or leave it in Medical as soon as it was finished. It was the best apology he could give.

Now, though, he had to make it perfect. There were still some weight issues, and the sensory input wasn’t as fine as Tony wanted it to be. He refused to give Bucky subpar work, so he threw himself into the project with vigor. In no time at all, he was fully engrossed in the mechanics.

Building an arm, Tony had found, was a lot harder than he’d anticipated. He wanted to make it as veristic as possible, in both function and feeling, but some of the technology for that didn’t exactly... exist. He’d come up with it, of course, but it wasn’t as refined as he knew it could be. The ideas were sticking in his brain; he hoped that working in the SHIELD labs would be able to jog them free. 

And jog them free it did. He lost himself in the act of creation, forcing the technology to bend to his will and be what he wanted it to be. The ideas flowed easily, and the arm came together in what felt like no time at all. He added the finishing touches with a bittersweet smile.

Finally, Tony stepped back, satisfied with his creation. Sure, there was room for improvement, but there always was. If Bucky used it, the SHIELD engineers could probably manage the upkeep, and maybe give it some upgrades. Tony resolved to leave a detailed set of directions; frankly, he didn’t trust the other engineers not to screw it up.

Unfortunately, though, he didn’t exactly  _ see  _ any other engineers. The lab was empty save for him, and Tony didn’t really want to leave a piece of highly advanced technology out where anyone could get their grubby little paws into its circuits. He decided to go with his plan B: dropping the arm off in the infirmary, where he knew Bucky and Natasha would have to go, and hoping he could get in and out before they did. 

Luck was on his side; he didn’t run into anyone on his way down to the medical wing. Sure, he got lost once or twice, and SHIELD  _ definitely  _ needed to invest in some damn signs, but he made it there eventually, and that was what mattered. The medical wing was empty, too; Tony counted his blessings.

Setting the case with the arm down, Tony scribbled a quick note on a piece of scrap paper from his pocket. He resolutely did  _ not  _ think of the last note he’d left and the last hasty escape he’d beaten. It was all in the past, anyway. This was the last time he was going to let himself think about Natasha and Bucky. This was a repayment for all they’d done for him, for all he’d done to them; after this, they were even.

It was for the best. 

Two sets of footsteps had him cursing and diving for a hiding spot ineffectually. Unfortunately, there were very few places one could hide from two trained spies, and Natasha and Bucky’s eyes fell on him almost immediately. 

“Fuck,” Tony groaned empathetically and slammed his head down on the table he’d tried to hide behind. Really, the universe was out to get him. The two agents moved in scary unison, stepping in front of the door so Tony couldn’t leave (he harbored no illusions that he could push past them, even as tired as they looked). Why they did it, he didn’t know; he was certain they’d want nothing to do with him, after the shit he’d pulled.

“Tony,” Bucky said, almost emotionless. Only his eyes gave away that this was still  _ Tony’s  _ Bucky, that Tony still knew the man standing in front of him. Everything else was alien, down to his rigid posture.

Tony glanced at Natasha, but she looked much the same. Oh, he realized, they both wanted the one thing that he  _ really  _ did not want to give. Much to his displeasure, though, he knew he owed them an explanation. With a sigh, he gave into their stares.

“Well, you might as well sit down,” he gestured to one of the tables, taking a seat himself. He tried his best not to look like a man on his way to his execution. “I guess we need to talk.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i know i said wednesday updates but consider: time is an arbitrary human construct and also i slept through all of wednesday
> 
> anyway enjoy!!

Natasha was  _ not  _ going to speak first. And why would she? She’d gotten in the last word last time; she didn’t need to get the first one, too. Everyone knew the first word was the worst one, anyway. So she sat and stared at Tony expectantly, feeling Bucky’s reassuring presence at her left. He could get the first word in. He was the one who wanted to talk, after all. 

Tony, to his credit, didn’t flinch or pale or look as terrified out of his mind as she was sure he was. She wondered who had taught him to hide his fear like that, and her hands balled into fists at the thought of it. He watched them both evenly until his impassive mask broke into a rueful smile.

“Have you ever wanted to be someone else?” Tony asked, something serious in his rhetorical tone. “No, I mean it. Have you ever woken up and realized,  _ god, I wish I could be anyone but who I am _ ?”

Natasha wanted to snap,  _ is that relevant? _ but she trusted Tony enough to know that he wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t. And wasn’t that a thought? She trusted Tony, even after everything. So she bit her tongue and nodded. Next to her, Bucky did the same. She wasn’t surprised by either of their answers. 

Tony shrugged. “So you know that if that opportunity comes, if someone drops an escape right in your lap, you take it, right?” he wasn’t looking at them, she noticed. His gaze was somewhere over her shoulder, somewhere miles and miles away. He looked so much older than he was. Tony didn’t wait for them to answer his question. “I do, at least. I did. Bucky handed me a way out, if only for a few weeks, and I’m selfish. I lied and pretended because I couldn’t bear to be myself for one more fucking minute. And I’m  _ sorry _ .” His voice broke. “I put you two in danger because I was selfish, and I am so, so sorry.”

“We weren’t in danger,” Bucky muttered mutinously. “We had everything under control.”

Both Natasha and Tony shot him-- and his left shoulder-- equally skeptical looks. 

“Mostly under control,” Bucky corrected with a scowl. “So that’s not really what you have to explain. We already knew you were running from something-- we want to know why you ran away from  _ us _ .”

Natasha couldn’t say she was a fan of Bucky so blatantly spilling their feelings-- he really was a  _ terrible  _ spy, if he couldn’t play his cards close to his chest-- but he wasn’t wrong. She didn’t care why Tony had come to them (though she had her suspicions). She wanted to know why he didn’t  _ stay _ .

She would never admit it, but he’d  _ hurt  _ her. Sure, a lot of that hurt had dissipated when she’d seen the open, wretched guilt that painted its way across his face, and when she’d realized that  _ of course  _ he was torturing himself over how he’d ended things. It still stung to think that he’d probably leave again, right after he finished apologizing for leaving the first time. At least it wouldn’t be without a warning this time. 

“As you both know, I’m a Stark,” said Tony, a seeming non-sequitur. He didn’t say it with the arrogance she’d expect from anyone else, but with a sort of sad resignation. “And that means that when Howard says jump, I jump. I don’t ask how high, because it won’t be high enough anyway, but I jump. Otherwise, bad things happen, and not just to me.”

“We’re protected by SHIELD,” Natasha pointed out, ignoring the clench in her chest that Tony’s statement had brought about. It was both unfamiliar  _ and  _ unwelcome. God, but emotions were upsetting.

Tony laughed without humor. “Not from Howard Stark, you’re not,” he shook his head. “And I wasn’t going to put you two on his radar. After everything I did, I could at least spare you that. So I left.”

“Calm down with the pity party,” Natasha said after a beat. Maybe it was a little harsh, but then again, so was she. “ _ After everything I did _ ? You screwed up, fine. But the only thing you’re really guilty of is shitty communication, and I think we can forgive that.”

“You should’ve told us, doll,” Bucky rumbled. She didn’t have to look at him to know his eyes were soft and fond; he was predictable like that. The man really could not hold a grudge. “We could’ve solved the problem together, rather than each of us being miserable alone.”

Rather than reassure him, as she’d hoped, their words seemed to have Tony on the verge of tears. “I’m  _ sorry _ ,” he choked out again, visibly shoving his messy emotions down and putting on as composed of a face as he was capable. It was painful to watch.

Natasha understood, in a way. She knew what it was like to be so sorry that it was like a gaping wound, apologies spilling out of her like blood and guts. Her first assassination, long before SHIELD, still hadn’t scarred over in her mind. She  _ also _ knew what it was like to shove the inconvenient feeling aside and finish the mission, because she had to, because it was what was expected of her. She wondered, idly, what Tony’s mission was. 

She wondered if he knew how to be forgiven.

She saw herself in the tense of his shoulders, like he was braced against whatever attacks they’d volley at him. She saw herself in his resolve not to shatter, at least not where they could see. She didn’t want him to be like her. 

Taking a breath, Natasha forced herself to stop dissecting Tony’s tells like she would a mark’s. She turned her eyes to Bucky, who met her gaze evenly. She could read him like a book:  _ I forgive him,  _ his eyes said.

Natasha nodded sharply.  _ I do, too _ . 

Bucky’s grin was there and gone in an instant, but it lingered in his eyes. He tilted his head expectantly as if to say,  _ well, what are you waiting for? Tell him. _

She wasn’t sure when it became  _ her  _ job to handle the talking, but she didn’t want to keep Tony on tenterhooks for as long as it would take to hash that out with Bucky, and the other man knew it. She was making  _ him  _ get the first word next time. 

“Tony,” she said gently, trying for authenticity. She was made of lies, she knew, but she wanted to make it clear that this was a truth. “It’s  _ fine _ .”

“I hurt you,” Tony said.

Natasha made a choice. “You did,” she answered honestly. “And I forgive you.”

“I forgive you, too,” said Bucky. He went a step further, reaching across the table to grab Tony’s hand, as if he could squeeze hard enough to demonstrate his sincerity. Not one to be outmatched, Natasha took Tony’s other hand. 

Tony turned his face away, though he wasn’t quite strong enough to break the grips of two trained spies. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he whispered. 

“You don’t get to decide that,” Bucky rumbled. “It’s ours to give.”

“You know,” Tony sniffled, and Natasha pretended not to see the tears on his cheeks. “It’s not fair of you to team up on me like this.”

“You can’t honestly expect us to play fair,” Natasha said, her tone unimpressed, but she knew the two men could hear the amusement underneath it. 

Tony grinned at her, and for one shining moment, everything was fine. It wasn’t perfect-- things never were, in her world-- but it was enough. If Natasha could’ve bottled up the contentment of the moment-- Bucky on one side of her, Tony on the other, both  _ happy _ \-- she would’ve positively hoarded it. But moments ended far too soon, and Tony’s face was falling before she was ready.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bucky, more tactfully than she’d planned to. So maybe her partner wasn’t completely useless.

Tony smiled sadly. “I miss our safehouse,” he said quietly.  _ I miss being with you two,  _ Natasha heard. “I have to go to my house, at some point. Howard’s expecting me for dinner this evening. And I just… I miss it.” 

“Come with us, then,” Bucky said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. To him, maybe it was, but Natasha could see the threads of obligation that bound Tony as surely as any chains. 

“I can’t,” Tony said predictably. “SI needs me.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to stay,” Bucky said gently. “If it makes you this unhappy, why would you?”

“Because,” he muttered dejectedly. “SI could be great. I could change things, make it into what it  _ should  _ be. I could help people. But I can’t do shit while Howard is still CEO, and god knows he’s going to hold onto that until he dies.” He sat up rigidly straight. “And, no, that is not an invitation to kill him.”

Natasha shrugged. “So start your own company,” she suggested easily. “You’re  _ Tony Stark _ , you’ll have no problem getting people on board. What are you waiting for?”

Tony stared at her, wide-eyed. There looked to be a million things racing through his mind. Fear showed in the lines of his face, but beneath it was  _ exhilaration _ . “What  _ am  _ I waiting for?” he repeated. “I could… I’m twenty-one, I could just… Oh my  _ god _ , Natasha, you are a  _ genius _ . How did I not think of this before?”

Natasha chuckled. “I know,” she said, secretly as pleased as the cat who got the canary and the cream. 

“Green energy!” Tony rambled, his hands tapping on the table in front of them. She’d seen this manic energy of his in their little safehouse a couple of times and it had only been satisfied when he’d been able to create something. “Arc reactor tech, I know Howard said it was a bust, but… Guys, I could figure it out!”

“We know,” Bucky slanted his eyes towards Natasha. They were impossibly soft, and she knew she had to look much the same. So sue her, Tony was adorable like this. A weight looked like it had been lifted off of his shoulders.

“I have to…” Tony was looking increasingly frazzled, running his hands through his hair wildly. “I have so many ideas!”

Bucky made the decision for them. “Go,” he said gently. “Sort this out. And then come back to us?”

“If you’ll have me, of course,” Tony said without hesitation. Natasha refused to admit how the knot in her chest unraveled at his words. The warmth was pure coincidence. And it had absolutely  _ nothing  _ to do with the almost absentminded kiss Tony planted on Bucky’s lips as he rounded the table, or the equally affectionate one he planted on the crown of her head. He kissed them like it was no big deal, affection doled out so freely with nothing expected in return, and skipped out of the room before she could question it. 

“Well, shit,” Bucky said after a long moment, and Natasha thought that summed everything up pretty nicely. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!! after this, there will be one more chapter and an epilogue :))

Bucky was, in a word, pining. It was pathetic. He was a highly trained spy; he didn’t do anything so mundane as  _ pine _ . Pining was for teenagers with their first crushes, not for mature adults like him, and definitely not for internationally feared secret agents. 

Trust Tony and Natasha to be the exceptions to his rule. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the Tony’s goodbye kisses (two of them, because he’d run back into the infirmary a minute after he’d left and pressed  _ a whole fucking arm  _ into Bucky’s chest with babbling that could generously be called an explanation, smacked another kiss on his forehead, and skipped out yet again, humming under his breath all the while), soft and sweet and promising. He  _ also  _ couldn’t help but to remember the fierce, unrelenting pressure of Natasha’s lips on his, the way she tasted like fire and flowers all at once. He wanted to kiss them both again and again until his mouth hurt with it.

But it wasn’t just physical. Bucky found them both attractive, of course, but it was far deeper than that. He wanted the little domestic things-- holding hands on the couch, dancing in the kitchen, comfortable silences during long missions-- as much as anything else. Bucky  _ trusted  _ them, wholly and without regret. He wasn’t in love yet, but he knew that he could be, that Natasha and Tony were the types of people he could give his heart over to.

Now, it wasn’t like Bucky had a problem with pining for both Natasha and Tony at once, not when he had it on good authority that they were both in the same boat. No, the problem was the practically glacial pace at which things were progressing, especially when they all knew they had feelings for one another. They’d all already kissed, for god's sake!

Bucky didn’t blame Tony for wanting to take things slow, to be  _ sure  _ before he dived in headfirst, but that didn’t mean that it was less frustrating to see Tony bite his lip and make those coy eyes and not be able to kiss him senseless. Natasha was an even bigger flirt, if that was possible, and ten times more brazen, which was a different level of frustration in itself. Tony had said shyly, on one of his visits to tinker with Bucky’s arm, that he didn’t mind if they didn’t wait for him, but neither Bucky nor Natasha had felt right about doing anything without him.

It had been almost three months since the end of their mission. Natasha and Bucky were still officially partners, and Tony popped up a little too often on their classified missions for it to be a coincidence (he claimed not to be hacking the SHIELD networks to figure out where they were, but he  _ also  _ claimed he hadn’t eaten the last slice of cake in their last safehouse. They all knew not to trust him at his word all the time, even if he did do the innocent eyes very well). It wasn’t like they were avoiding each other, or shoving down their feelings, or anything like that. They were just… dancing around one another, waiting for someone else to make the first move and tip their hypotheticals into reality.

Luckily for them, Bucky really hated dancing. 

His plan was guaranteed to be effective, if inelegant. He wasn’t one for complicated and twisted schemes, like Natasha was (knowing her, this waiting game was a manipulation on her part to get him to do the asking), or elaborate ones, like Tony (knowing  _ him _ , there would definitely be explosions. Or skywriters. Or both). Bucky figured he could be straightforward and just ask his partners out on a date. How hard could it be? It wasn’t like they were going to say no.

He had, of course, forgotten to account for the fact that his partners were  _ idiots _ . 

“We should get coffee when the mission ends,” he said casually, flipping through the dossier on his lap. “All three of us.”

Tony-- who wasn’t even supposed to be there, but had convinced Natasha and Bucky not to throw him out with a blinding smile-- wrinkled his nose. “We have coffee beans in the cabinet,” he said, sounding confused. “Unless-- Bucky, did you drink all of my coffee?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Bucky shuddered, knowing well what happened to the poor souls who finished Tony’s coffee without replacing it. Natasha had gotten the silent treatment for a week the last time she did it, and Tony had threatened escalation if it happened again. “I meant that we should all go out to a coffee shop or something. Together.”

“We always do that after missions,” Natasha pointed out, arching her eyebrow. Bucky couldn’t tell if she was fucking with him or genuinely oblivious to his intentions; both were pretty on brand for her. “Which is why we’re always late for debrief.”

“You guys don’t have to come with me to get coffee every time,” Tony argued back, flopping back where he was sitting on the sofa and putting his head in Natasha’s lap. “I could just go by myself and you could go to your stupid debriefs on time. Maybe then Fury would like you more.”

Natasha, surprisingly, didn’t kill or even lightly maim him. Instead, she carded a deadly hand through his soft curls. “But then who’s to stop you from accidentally following some other spy out of the shop? You have a record, you know.”

“That was one time!” Tony protested. “You can’t hold that over me for the rest of my life. Bucky, be on my side here.”

Bucky couldn’t help but to chuckle. “Sorry, doll, but she has a point.”

“I have never felt more betrayed in my entire life,” Tony huffed, leveling them both with glares. The glares would’ve been intimidating if Bucky hadn’t seen him practicing it in the mirror (which was  _ adorable _ ). 

“Is it betrayal if I’m objectively correct?” Natasha mused. 

“I meant as a date, by the way,” Bucky clarified, cutting off their squabbling before Tony could go into what constituted a betrayal and how that made Natasha his least favorite (they’d gone through the spiel before). “We don’t have to get coffee; I just want to go on a date with you two.”

He watched their expressions carefully. Natasha’s face had closed off somewhat, but he could see affection shining in her eyes and in the slight curve of her lips. She looked smugly satisfied, too, which meant she had  _ definitely  _ been fucking with him earlier, but there was still a thread of anxiety in her posture. Tony was easier to read: naked hope warred with cynicism on his face. He was visibly overthinking Bucky’s offer, the cogs turning in his head to look for the other shoe before it dropped.

Bucky took a breath. He wasn’t used to putting himself out there and being vulnerable, but for these two, he could try. “Listen,” he said. “I like you both. A lot. And I think that we could work out if we tried. Don’t you want to try?”

Natasha’s gaze glimmered with warmth. He felt lucky that she was showing it to him, to them. “I do,” she answered quietly.

“Me, too,” said Tony, his hands twisting anxiously but with a blinding smile on his face. 

“Me, three,” Bucky refused to pump his fist in victory, but he was cheering on the inside. “It’s a date.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy :))

The coffee shop looked exactly the same as it did when Tony first met Bucky, down to the unidentifiable stain on the corner table they’d claimed that first day. It had become their usual table over the months they’d been coming after missions, mostly due to its sightlines to the rest of the shop, though Tony was partial to its proximity to the counter so he could easily get more coffee. The coffee shop was a part of their routine, but they’d never gone into it quite like this. 

Never as a  _ date _ .

Tony was a little nervous, to say the least. He wasn’t sure why, if he was being honest, seeing as all the evidence pointed to Natasha and Bucky liking him back, but he couldn’t quiet the little skeptical voice in his head, asking why two amazing people like them would ever want someone like him, with his laundry list of character defects. 

But then Natasha smiled at him, and Bucky grabbed his hand, and he calmed down a little bit. They liked him. That wasn’t so unbelievable, was it? Taking a deep breath, he squeezed Bucky’s hand and let them to their usual table while Natasha went off to grab their drinks. She had their orders memorized, probably more out of habit than sentiment, but it still had something warm and fuzzy fluttering in Tony’s chest. No one had ever memorized his coffee order before.

Tony sat down next to Bucky, leaving an open seat for Natasha on his right. His words caught in his throat as his hands twisted awkwardly on the table. Everything felt different in the warm light of the coffee shop. Their ability to make easy conversation had flown out the window the second Bucky had said  _ date _ . 

Truth be told, Tony always got like this around people he really, truly liked. His silver tongue and the patented Stark charm abandoned him, leaving only the shy and awkward bits of himself behind. He worried that Natasha and Bucky wouldn’t like him like this, and that worry stayed his tongue and had him averting his eyes from Bucky’s face. He was pretty sure he was blushing, too, which was really just the icing on the cake. 

“You okay, doll?” asked Bucky, shaking Tony out of his spiraling thoughts. There was a concerned wrinkle between his eyebrows and he reached his hand out to take Tony’s, squeezing it reassuringly.

Tony flushed deeper. “Nervous,” he admitted hesitantly. “What if I screw this up?”

“You can’t,” Bucky said confidently. As if sensing that Tony needed a distraction, he continued. “And besides, whatever you do can’t possibly be worse than what my last partner did in Romania.”

Tony latched onto the conversation starter eagerly. “What did they do?” 

“Well,” Bucky flailed his arms about like Tony did when he told stories, his eyes sparkling. “So you know how I like plums, right?”

By the time Natasha got back with their coffees, Tony was giggling along to Bucky’s story about a mission gone horribly, comically wrong, all nervousness forgotten. She shot them fond smiles, more a quirking of lips than anything, as she handed them their drinks and sat down to the right of Tony. The table was small, keeping both of his dates within touching range, which Tony took full advantage of. 

“And then, of course, the asshole made  _ me  _ explain everything to Fury,” Bucky finished, rolling his eyes and taking a sip of his coffee. “Thanks, Nat.”

“Thanks, Nat,” Tony echoed, pecking her cheek in a moment of bravery. 

“You’re welcome,” she said. She didn’t blush, because that would’ve been too easy, but Tony thought he saw a hint of pink on her pale cheeks. “And Bucky, that is not how it happened.”

“I editorialized a tiny bit,” Bucky admitted, winking at Tony. “But the gist of it is true: never let Steve Rogers fool you into thinking he can be stealthy.”

“If I remember correctly,  _ you  _ were the one who blew your cover on that mission over a couple of plums,” Natasha countered with a grin. Tony looked at Bucky, who flushed darkly. 

“You weren’t even there,” he huffed and shot her a glare. “How do you know that?”

Natasha shrugged. “Rogers is a gossip,” she said simply. “Also, I read the file.”

“Busted,” Tony snickered, earning himself a swat on the head from Bucky. 

“You two are so mean to me,” Bucky moaned, but Tony could see the smile twitching at the corners of his lips. “Really, I don’t deserve this.”

“Debatable,” Natasha took a long sip of her tea-- she was a heathen, Tony had discovered, who preferred tea to coffee. “But fine, we’ll move on. Tony, I’ve been meaning to ask you how your new company set up is going.”

It was Tony’s turn to blush, it seemed. He didn’t realize that they’d remembered that, especially because he hadn’t mentioned it in months. He should’ve guessed they would, though; they were good like that. 

“It’s going well,” he said, delighting in the smiles that grew on both his partners’ faces. “I’m trying to secure a few more investors, but our first prosthetics line should be out in a few months.”

Bucky looked down at his gleaming metal hand. It was the reason Tony had decided to start with prosthetics, after all. He’d been working on making revolutionary prosthetics like the one he’d made for Bucky more affordable and a little less high-maintenance (Bucky’s arm, while a masterpiece, was a tempermental piece of machinery that required more upkeep than the average person would enjoy, especially if they weren’t dating their mechanic). 

“That’s amazing,” Bucky said, leaning in for a kiss that, while chaste, had Tony’s head spinning and his mouth parting unconsciously for more, more, more. 

Natasha was watching them when they pulled apart. There was no jealousy on her face, just a softness that Tony knew no one else ever saw. “It really is, Tosya,” she agreed. Her kiss was quicker than Bucky’s, but dirtier, as if making up for the fact that it lasted mere seconds. Tony was sure he was tomato red.

Judging by the satisfied smirks on his spies’ lips, he definitely was.

“Thanks,” he said, tapping his fingers on the table as he tried to regain his composure. “It, uh… it means I’ll be spending less time with you guys in the field, though, if this takes off.”

He braced himself for an argument. That was how some of his exes would’ve responded, he knew. Running the new company would definitely mean that he had far less time for Bucky and Natasha, for languid hours in safehouses and being the voice in their ears on missions. Their relationship would have to change, and Tony didn’t know how they’d feel about that. Of course, he was worried for nothing.   
  
Bucky shrugged. “We know, doll,” he said. “And we’ll miss you, of course, but you’ve gotta do your thing. Think of how much good you’re bringing into the world.”

“You have your own life separate from SHIELD and us,” Natasha continued. “We’re glad you let us be a part of it. But we aren’t going to stop you from living it.”

Tony’s jaw didn’t drop, but it was a near thing. His heart swelled with fondness-- something that could grow into love, he knew, if he let it-- for his partners. He had no idea why he’d been nervous in the first place; Bucky and Natasha were perfect, and he was going to cling onto them with both hands and everything he had.

Tony squeezed their hands, on the verge of too tightly. He couldn’t find the words he needed to tell them what they meant to him, but he figured they knew anyway. After all, what kind of spies would they be if they couldn’t read the naked affection on his face?

From the way they squeezed back, Tony knew they could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter on saturday and then we're done!!


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last chapter!! enjoy :))

Natasha cursed under her breath as gunshots pinned her down. There were too many of them-- faulty intel, she figured, and she was going to  _ kill  _ whoever had prepared their briefing packets-- for her and Bucky to take on, even with Tony in their ears.

“Tony,” she hissed, popping out from behind the corner that served as her cover to fire a few shots into the guards. “I think we need backup. Or an extraction.”

A year ago, she would have rather had all of her teeth pulled than admit to a weakness. But a year with Bucky and Tony by her side had made her soft, and not necessarily in a bad way. They’d taught her to stop hoarding the broken pieces of herself and trust that they’d be able to catch her when she fell. So she could admit to Tony and Bucky that this mission was a little too much without feeling like she was failing as the Black Widow. After all, she could still kick both of their asses blindfolded with a hand tied behind her back, and that was what really mattered.

Next to her, Bucky nodded tersely. His gunfire covered her retreat a few paces closer to the door. “Yeah, doll,” he agreed. “Can you help us out?”

Tony’s voice was serious, the way it always was on missions. “Backup will be there in two minutes,” he said. “Are you guys good until then?”

“We’ll manage,” Natasha grunted, tossing one of Tony’s custom grenades over her shoulder to cover Bucky. “But it better be exactly two minutes or you’re sleeping on the couch.”

“Picky, picky,” Tony clucked. Static filled the com for a moment; probably Tony handling the backup situation, she reasoned. “You know, you could be nicer to me, seeing as I’m about to save you and all.”

“I’ll show you nice,” she fired a few more rounds, but there were still too many guards to safely retreat.

“Stop flirting over the coms,” Bucky complained. “Or at least flirt with me a little, please.”

Tony’s sweet laugh had Natasha smiling, too. “Aw,” he cooed. “Is someone feeling left out?”

“Damn right I am,” said Bucky shamelessly. 

“Well, there will be plenty of time for us to flirt with you later,” Tony said, his voice growing a little louder. “Your two minutes are up; backup is here!”

Natasha watched as a black-suited figure vaulted through the door, taking the guards by surprise. Their gun-- one of Tony’s fancy new designs, powered by the arc reactor he’d managed to miniaturize-- was far more efficient than hers, taking out swathes of their opponents. Natasha tried to help out where she could, but their rescuer seemed to have it covered. They moved quickly, their style just on the edge of familiar. 

Their backup put their hood down when he got close to Natasha, and her mouth dropped open. Tony stood in full tac gear, smirking cockily as he fired shot after shot. He moved like he was born to be a spy, rather than their tech support. Really, it wasn’t fair that he could do both.  _ She  _ didn’t infringe on his computer expertise. 

“I thought you said you were sending backup!” Natasha practically shouted. 

“I  _ am  _ backup, you ungrateful--” gunshots cut Tony’s complaint off and he darted out of the way, looking as nimble as he did when he was training with them. “Anyway. The coast will be clear in a minute, don’t feel like you need to help or anything.”

Natasha, quite honestly, could not have moved if she tried. It wasn’t like Tony was unattractive normally-- quite the opposite, in fact-- but something about him in his skintight leather suit, holding his gun with a lazy sort of confidence, was doing things to her. Natasha, at least, kept her mouth closed; next to her, Bucky wasn’t as restrained. His jaw was practically on the floor as he watched Tony dance around the guards and clear their retreat in seconds.

“I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting that,” Bucky said after a long moment. His voice was hoarse; she knew hers was the same.

“Me neither,” she said.

“This is doing a lot for me,” Bucky admitted, scooting closer to her hiding spot as they watched Tony finish up.

“Me, too,” she agreed. Her eyes were still on Tony.

“You two know that I can still hear you, right?” Tony turned, giving them a look over his shoulder. His eyes glimmered with amusement and love. “Your coms are still on.”

“Oh, your partners think you’re hot, how terrible for you to overhear,” Bucky rolled his eyes fondly. “We could be talking about your habit of leaving the cereal boxes open in the morning, if you’d prefer.”

“Or how you always leave your socks on the floor,” Natasha teased. “Or--”

Tony scowled at them. “Back to me being hot,” he said smoothly, clearing his throat. “I’m all done kicking ass out here, you two can come out.”

Natasha stood, putting her gun back in its hip holster as she walked towards Tony. With her newly free hands, she grabbed his face and pulled it down to hers in a searing kiss. Tony took a moment to get with the program, but it was gratifying to hear the clatter of his dropped gun hitting the floor so he could wind his hands through her hair. 

Natasha was pretty sure she’d never get tired of kissing Tony, the way he went soft and sweet against her lips, practically melting into her. He kissed her like she was something precious, someone worthy of all the love he kept in his bleeding heart, and it was more than a little addictive. She hoped that he could feel her love for him, too, as she whispered it against his mouth.

Tony broke for air, panting. He was staring at her with something akin to wonder, his pupils blown and cheeks flushed. Before he could say a word, Bucky was swooping in to capture his lips while Natasha took a step back and watched. 

Seeing her boys together always had something melting in her chest. Their love for each other was different than their love for her, but just as strong. Natasha wasn’t sure what good thing she’d done in her life to deserve them, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to cling to it with both hands. 

When the pair pulled apart, Tony looked thoroughly debauched while Bucky sent her a self-satisfied smirk that she couldn’t help but to return.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Tony said when he got his breath back. “But what was that for? Again, I want to make it very clear that I am  _ not  _ complaining and you two have blanket permission to do that whenever you want.”

Natasha smiled coyly. “Can’t we say thank you for getting us out of a tough spot?”

“I hope you don’t thank all your backup that way,” Tony snorted.

“Only the pretty ones,” Bucky said with a wink. He grabbed Tony’s hand. “Come on, let’s get home so we can thank you properly.”

Tony, blushing fiercely, offered his other hand to Natasha. She took it, threading their fingers together and returning his adoring look with one of her own. 

  
She couldn’t imagine ever letting go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my thanks everyone who has read, commented, or given me kudos :)) yall are the reason i keep writing. i hope you enjoyed this as much as i did!! i don't currently have plans for a sequel or anything, but i might do oneshots in this verse, so if that's something you're interested in keep an eye out!!
> 
> thanks again for sticking with this story :))

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos make me happy :))
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr [@imposter-human](https://imposter-human.tumblr.com/)


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